


guide me to where we restart

by Chrome



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Domestic Fluff, Dreams and Nightmares, Drowning, Family Fluff, Fluff, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Kid Fic, M/M, Married Caduceus Clay/Fjord, Minor Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 56,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25515865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrome/pseuds/Chrome
Summary: Grief in general is a difficult thing for Fjord to wrap his head around. He hasn’t truly grieved a terrible loss before; never had anything he couldn’t bear losing before. Now—he can’t imagine losing Caduceus. Can hardly imagine a day without him. “Do you think it gets easier?”“Oh,” Caduceus says, “Everything gets easier, I think.”---After everything, Caduceus and Fjord find a little house on a cliff by the sea, and a life follows.
Relationships: Caduceus Clay/Fjord, Fjord & The Mighty Nein
Comments: 258
Kudos: 276
Collections: Caduceus Clay Whump Collection





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was initially inspired by [Fionn's art](https://twitter.com/coniferouskiddo) and owes its existence and form to the wonderful [Star](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardreamertwo)\--thank you. Thank you to Jelly for beta reading.
> 
> Star also wrote a beautiful folk song for this fic, ["Sailor's Prayer,"](https://soundcloud.com/user-460002969/sailors-prayer) which you can and should listen to [here](https://soundcloud.com/user-460002969/sailors-prayer).
> 
> Please see the end notes if you would like more information about tags or warnings.

They do not build the house.

Even as a daydreaming orphan child—and Fjord was relatively certain that of all children, orphans tended to daydream the most—Fjord had never fantasized about house-building. About sailing, sure. About having enough gold to buy all the food he wanted and a horse to ride far away, certainly. About his parents—all variations, orc and human either way, or both half-orc themselves—coming back crying and looking for him, regretting every second they’d left him alone—more often than he’d ever admit. And he’d fantasized about houses, about having a home, but never about building one. It had always just been, fully-formed, there for him to find.

And so it was with this house—they had been talking about finding a place for some time, at first vaguely and then more concretely as they traveled, and they’d already begun circling in almost subconsciously around the Menagerie Coast by the time that it became an imperative.

And not long after and half a day’s ride north of Nicodranas, they had found the little fishing village of Bluecove, and Caduceus had walked with a strange directiveness up the small path that wound up the cliffside. The cottage had been there at the top, a little forlorn, beautiful somehow even with the paint faded by the salt-wind, the once-garden knotted up with wild sea roses and heather.

So it is as Fjord has always imagined it: there, fully-formed, and Caduceus seems certain that it’s theirs just as he seemed certain that there was something up that cliffside to find, but Fjord doesn’t allow himself to imagine anything more until they’re back down in the seaside town that night and find the woman whose mother once lived there. She’s happy enough to sell it to them—it’s a small town, a little place called Bluecove, inhabited by the sort of people who live by their catch and the whim of the sea and nothing else. Fjord is very aware of the weight of the gold they carry and when she cautiously asks for five hundred gold, hands her ten platinum without a pause.

They do not build the house, but Fjord builds the fence and Caduceus plants the garden and wherever you stand, at the wooden gate Fjord took four tries to hang straight or in the middle of Caduceus’ root vegetables, as long as you turn your head to the west, you can see the ocean.

\---

They don’t spend a lot of time in the village, at first. Fjord believes that he’ll find no trouble—none of these people seem bothered by a half-orc, although Caduceus always draws looks—but he doesn’t like the idea of testing them, not yet, and neither of them have grown restive. There are always clothes to wash, a crooked board to mend, soil to till. When there isn’t, or they’ve simply grown tired of the work, they sit together and meditate in the garden, caught between the cool dark earth and the light salt breeze that comes curling upwards from the water.

Fjord gets to know a few people down in the village, which is mostly human with a few elves and half-elves and quarter-elves and smaller denominations of elvish blood that don’t show on their features. Fjord likes Lucy, who sells vegetables sometimes for a man named Sildar who keeps a farm outside the city, and who tells him Sildar will have some seeds to sell when they’re ready to plant. There’s Anders, an older fisherman who complains about his joints and sells fresh cod and crab and tells Fjord about his wife with soft eyes and no prompting. Malia is a sharp-eyed quarter elf who works as a carpenter, mending boats, although Fjord thinks she fishes too.

Most of them fish, even if they don’t call themselves fishermen, Fjord learns. It is the way of things in a place like Bluecove.

Fjord does not fish, with the exception of picking up shelled creatures along the shoreline, which is also the habit of children and therefore a place of free reign. He knows instinctively as someone who grew up along the shore that there is claimed territory among all of the people here. If he wanted to—to buy a boat, to adopt their occupation—he would be allotted his place, deliberately and collectively, but he doesn’t yet.

They don’t need the money, and Fjord will always love the ocean, but he doesn’t like the idea of going too far out. There are still scores being kept.

Caduceus is regarded as more of an oddity than Fjord. None of these people have seen a firbolg before, and Caduceus is tall and a riot of color. When he comes to the market with Fjord, it is the children who tend to approach him, and Fjord often returns to him kneeling among them, explaining something slowly, letting them touch his hair or the staff he uses as much as a cane as a focus, these days.

Fjord knows that Caduceus’ knee bothers him, that the changes in air pressure and humidity don’t help, and so he sometimes makes the trip down the cliffside alone, especially on days when a storm is on the horizon. As a result, the people of Bluecove know Fjord better than Caduceus, at least for a little while. The morning sky is deep red on the day that changes, bleeding pink and then a strange gray haze as the sun rises.

“Red sky at morning…” Caduceus murmurs.

“Sailor take warning,” Fjord agrees, and his hand finds Caduceus’ knee before he can, pressing a thumb into the usual tense place. “You wanted seeds, didn’t you? I can get them.”

“Thanks,” Caduceus says, accepting it easily. “The soil is as good as we’ll get it, and we want them in before it rains.”

“You’ll show me how?” Fjord asks. The garden at the Xhorhouse aside, he’s never had a place to set things in the ground, put down roots. He likes the idea of Caduceus teaching him.

“Of course,” Caduceus says. “I’ll make sure it’s ready.”

So Caduceus settles in the garden, staff close at hand in case he needs to rise, and Fjord takes a little coin and makes his way into town to find Lucy or Sildar. It’s a busy day at the market, with some of the men and women who’d normally be on the sea heeding the odd weather and staying docked; those who do go out are keeping closer to shore, ready to try and beat the storm in.

Sildar is at the stall today, produce laid out in neat baskets, his old horse unhitched from the cart and munching aimlessly on straw. He is involved in a conversation with a young man who Fjord doesn’t recognize, distracted enough that Fjord can get right up to them without catching his attention.

“You’d be quicker sailing in, honestly,” Sildar is saying as Fjord approaches.

“She’ll die,” the man Fjord didn’t recognize says. His eyes are wild. It makes Fjord a little nervous; not enough to call the sword to his hand, which he suspects would draw more attention than he wants in this moment or in the village at all. “It shouldn’t even be happening yet...”

“You won’t make it overland, son,” Sildar says. His voice is sympathetic, but he has moved between the distraught man and the horse, and has a calming hand against its bridle. The man has come to beg use of the horse, then; Fjord can’t tell if Sildar truly believes his goal is futile, doesn’t trust the man with the mare, or if it’s a mix of both. But he suspects it’s the first when Sildar adds, gingerly, “And you’ll want to be with her, Vin.”

The man lets out a little anguished groan. “Someone else could ride...”

“Sailing would get you there faster,” he says. “Even with the still.” The coming storm has left them with an unusually windless day. Not good for a port city. Apparently particularly bad for this man.

Sildar looks up then and sees Fjord hovering. “Hello,” he says. “Mr.—what was it? Lucy said she sold you vegetables.”

“Fjord Clay,” Fjord says. “Call me Fjord.” Sildar is holding a hand out to shake, and so Fjord steps forward and shakes it, although he doesn’t like getting too close to the distraught younger man. “Is there a...problem?”

“You’re a sailor, aren’t you?” Sildar asks, before the other man can speak.

“Ahh, used to be,” Fjord says. “Let’s say—mostly retired, now.”

“Then not one you can fix, son,” Sildar says. Fjord isn’t sure Sildar’s much older than him, but he doesn’t correct him. He looks older, with his weatherbeaten features, but Fjord is aware how sea and sun and wind change human skin in a way that his half-orc heritage spares him.

“I need to ride for Nicodranas—“ the man—Vin, apparently—begins.

“Half a day there, then back,” Fjord says, then glances at the horse. “Riding hard. And she’s—beautiful,” he says, with a nod to Sildar, “But not made for that, I think.”

“She is not,” Sildar agrees. Then: “Time was, our village had a healer,” he adds, apropos of nothing. “She died some years ago. You bought her place. Her daughter never learned the trade.”

“What’s in Nicodranas?” Fjord asks. He doesn’t want Vin to hurt Sildar, or his horse, who is a lovely black mare even if she’s clearly getting on in years judging from the grey at her muzzle.

“A midwife,” Vin says. “My wife—the baby’s coming too soon. She’s bleeding.”

“Oh,” Fjord says, surprised. It explains the healer comment, at least. “I don’t know about—babies, but. My, uh,” his mouth still feels odd around the word husband, even though he remembers the wedding so vividly, how Jester had insisted on dressing them both, how Caduceus had a garden’s worth of flowers braided into his hair. “My husband is a healer.”

Vin turns and seems to see Fjord for the first time. “Please, help her, please...”

“Go home, Vin,” Sildar says, with some authority. “I’ll go back with Fjord and show him the way to your place.”

Vin gives Fjord a fervent look and then practically runs.

Sildar sighs, pats the horse. “You mean that?”

“About Caduceus?” Fjord asks. “I—yes. I don’t know if he’s ever delivered a baby, though.”

“Hope he’s a fast learner,” Sildar says with his eyebrows raised. He asks the next man, who Fjord doesn’t know, to watch his stall, and then he lets Fjord lead the way towards the cottage. “If you don’t mind me saying, that’s an odd healer who wouldn’t have delivered a child before. Where’d you two come from?”

“All over,” Fjord admits. “We were—I guess you would say adventurers, before. He’s a cleric,” Fjord says. “Of the Wildmother.”

Sildar nods approvingly. “The sea is hers and this town belongs to the sea,” he says. “Vin and Cara are fisherfolk. They’d be glad to have a priest of the Mother, knowing ‘bout babies or not.”

Fjord nods, not quite trusting his voice. It is still strange to feel so wanted—strange to be welcomed to a place, strange to carry the banner of a God so beloved.

They hurry up the path. Caduceus is where Fjord left him, in the garden, wrist-deep in the dirt. He looks up and rises immediately; Fjord gathers he must have a somewhat frantic expression.

“What?” he asks, standing at full height, all calm urgency. “Do I need my armor?”

“No,” Fjord says. “Can you deliver a baby?”

“I’ve more experience on the other side of a life,” Caduceus says. “But you wouldn’t be asking if there was someone better, would you? Let me wash my hands.” He disappears inside.

“He’s tall,” is Sildar’s only remark.

“Yep,” Fjord says, and they stand in the garden in silence.

Caduceus emerges with clean hands, his hair tied back, and a hastily assembled bundle of herbs. Between that and his staff, his hands are full, so Fjord can’t hold one like he’d really like to. Sildar leads them down the hill and through the village to a small house with a red tile roof. Without pause, he knocks sharply on the wood door. “Vin!”

A woman answers, in her mid-thirties, with long hair already going grey. “Sildar. He’s with Cara.” Her eyes flicker to the strangers, Fjord and Caduceus. Fjord shifts uncomfortably. Caduceus just lets her look, accustomed as he is to drawing eyes.

“Found a healer,” Sildar indicates Caduceus. To her credit, she immediately steps aside and ushers them in. The ceiling in the house is lower than their cottage; Caduceus doesn’t quite have to stoop, but it’s a near thing.

The house is small; there is the main room in which they stand, where Fjord can see two rough-hewn wood chairs and a faded woolen rug in front of an unlit fire. There is a kitchen attached, and Fjord picks out the wood burning stove and small table through the open doorway. The other open doorway has a rug hanging across it, which has been pushed aside. It leads to a bedroom, where all the other occupants of the house seem to be congregated.

“You’re back,” Vin looks up through the doorway, only marginally less wild-eyed than he was in the market. A pretty young woman with dark hair is in the bed he sits beside. “You,” his eyes light on Caduceus. “Can you help her?”

“I will try,” Caduceus says. They’re noncommittal words, but they don’t sound noncommittal when Caduceus says them. They sound resolved, in his steady deep voice. “I need you to boil water.”

“I can do that,” the woman says.

“What’s your name?” Caduceus asks her, eyes flicking back.

“Laurel Keating,” she says. “I was a friend of Cara’s mama. I’m no midwife, but we don’t have one—didn’t have one,” she gives a respectful nod to Caduceus. “And I’ve seen a few babies come into this world, so I came.”

“I may need a pair of hands, Ms. Keating,” Caduceus says. “You had better stay here. Vin can boil water, can’t he?”

“Of course,” Vin says, and practically runs.

Once he is gone out the back door, Caduceus says matter-of-factly, “It’ll be some time yet and he needs something to do besides worry. How are you doing, Ms. Cara?”

The woman in the bed—Cara—laughs and then gasps in pain. “Oh—you’re right, though...is it supposed to hurt this much?” she asks. “Vin said you’re a healer?”

“I’m a cleric of the Wildmother,” Caduceus says. “I know some healing.”

Fjord turns to look at Sildar, who has hovered by the door like him. “I’ll be getting back,” he says. “Come if you need me, Mrs. Keating.” He turns to Fjord. “Were you coming down to the village for something in particular?”

The purpose of Fjord’s visit to Sildar resurrects itself in his mind—the morning, while only maybe an hour prior, feels very distant. “Seeds,” he said. “I was going to buy vegetable seeds.” He glances at Caduceus.

It is either Caduceus’ sixth sense for intentions or his supernatural hearing that tips him off, because from the bedroom Caduceus says, “You can go, Fjord. I’ll call if I need you.”

“For what?” Cara asks. “What would you call him for?” She’s probably trying to figure out what Fjord does. His trousers and boots and red cloak don’t scream ‘healer’, of course.

“Probably for nothing. It will be alright,” Caduceus says, in his steady way. He reaches out and rests a hand on her shoulder and with a murmur, a bright gold glow lights his hand and then flees from his fingertips into her chest.

“What’s that?” Cara asks. Fjord has seen that spell cast before, but in the moment can’t place it.

“A tether,” Caduceus says, oblique as ever. “You’ll be fine. We have time yet.”

So Fjord goes with Sildar. It’s at once a relief to no longer be hovering uselessly, and uncomfortable to have turned away and left Caduceus by himself. But of course this is not a battlefield; there is nothing to guard Caduceus from, no fight that Fjord could aid him in.

“Got a good bedside manner,” Sildar says. “Your husband does.”

“He’s—yes,” Fjord says. “He—has a way of making it seem like everything will be alright.”

“And is it?” Sildar asks. Fjord can’t tell what he’s asking—if Caduceus can be trusted? If Fjord thinks Cara and her baby will be okay? There are uncharitable ways to take the words, but Sildar has been kind enough that Fjord doesn’t jump to them.

“It’s worked out for me,” Fjord says, honestly. They have come out of the little lines of houses into the market square, and Sildar pats the mare on the nose, nods in response.

“Good,” Sildar says. “What sort of seeds are you looking for?”

Fjord knows only a little about gardening, and so he ends up picking out a mix of what Silas recommends and the vegetables he likes or knows Caduceus likes to cook with. Caduceus eats no meat, so he starts with more substantial vegetables—carrots, squash, eggplant—and then lettuce and tomatoes and peppers. He asks about potatoes and Sildar gives him a little bag of potato eyes, cut out from the vegetable. He laughs at Fjord’s bewildered expression.

“It’s how you plant ‘em,” he swears.

“Well,” Fjord sighs. “If you’re having me on, Caduceus will know.”

“I wouldn’t,” Sildar says. “Gardener’s honor.”

Fjord isn’t sure what that’s worth, but he takes it, especially when Sildar refuses to take his coin. “It’s worth a few copper,” Sildar says. “What your husband is doing for Vin and Cara? Consider the seeds a poor payment for that.”

Fjord knows better than to protest too much—they can more than afford it, of course, but there’s no point in drawing attention to the sheer amount of gold they’ve amassed as they adventured. So he thanks Sildar profusely and walks home. He lays all the seeds out on the counter for Caduceus’ inspection, and hangs up the spade and hoe Caduceus left in the garden. He sweeps up. And then he wanders out into the garden and watches the ocean for a while and waits.

The afternoon is beginning to wane when Caduceus’ voice rings in his head. “It’s done. They’re both well. I’ll be home soon.”

“That’s great,” Fjord says. “That’s—incredible, you’re incredible, Caduceus.”

After that, he finds it impossible to wait. He walks down to the village, passing Sildar, who is leading the mare to his house on the town outskirts. “Haven’t seen him leave,” Sildar says.

“It’s done,” Fjord says. “Just waiting to meet him.”

“How do you know that?”

“Spell,” Fjord says. “He told me he’d be home soon.”

Sildar grins, knowingly. “And you came down to meet him? Newlyweds.” He shakes his head.

Fjord blushes involuntarily and makes a quick exit. He doesn’t want to intrude, so he stands out on the street and waits, enjoying the fading warmth of the day.

The door opens after another few minutes and Caduceus emerges. He smiles when he sees Fjord. A loose white strand of hair has slipped out of the tie and hangs beside his face.

“All is well?” Fjord asks.

“They’re both fine,” Caduceus says. “Yes. I—they’ll send for me if they need.” He shakes his head. “I...yes. They’re fine.”

“Give me that,” Fjord says. He takes the bag from Caduceus to free one of his hands and takes it, as he wanted to that morning. It is shaking, very slightly.

“You were amazing,” Fjord says, quietly, as they walk through the village. “Do you know that?”

“I had—very little idea what I was doing,” Caduceus says. He pauses. “I asked the Wildmother.”

“You—what?”

“She was bleeding and Cure Wounds wouldn’t stop it,” Caduceus sighs. “So I cast Divination.”

Fjord grins widely. The image is just so endearing. “What did Cara say?”

“I didn’t tell her,” Caduceus says. “It felt—not encouraging. To watch someone pray to their Goddess so they can save you.”

“It was smart,” Fjord says. “And you did it, clearly.”

“She was—“ Caduceus shakes his head. “It’s strange. We spent so long fighting. It’s strange—outside of battle...”

He trails off. They start up the cliff side path, and it is just then that Fjord remembers where he has seen that spell, with the golden light, what Caduceus told Cara was a tether. “Did you put a Death Ward on her?”

Caduceus nods, and lets out a little laugh. Then it breaks into a sob. He goes invisible in an embarrassed flash and Fjord turns and catches him in his arms, holds him for the few seconds it takes for him to reappear. “You are incredible.”

“I was afraid,” Caduceus says, plainly. He is fully reappeared, but he stands there and lets Fjord steady him. “When someone puts—their life, their child’s life, in your hands. I want them to be right to do so.”

“We all were,” Fjord says. “You know I wouldn’t be here without you. None of us would be.”

“This is a different place,” Caduceus says. “The other side of a life.”

“It’s a good place to be,” Fjord says, as gently as he can. They start walking again. Caduceus is right, though. He is accustomed to the line between the wound and the grave, people treading the path between their end and their continuation. Birth is its own sort of liminal space. “Were you—did it make you unhappy?”

“No—it was so beautiful,” Caduceus says. “He’s so small. I didn’t know humans could be that small. It was beautiful and I was so terrified, the whole time.” They are coming up on the house now, and Caduceus’ laugh starts as a laugh and stays a laugh all the way through. “It will be like fighting, I think. It will get easier.”

“That’s a better thing,” Fjord says, unthinkingly. “To get used to.”

“Are you used to this?” Caduceus asks, and Fjord knows he means this—the sun, setting off brilliant gold and orange and violet in the sky over the sea, the earth half dug up for the garden, the little house. Neither of them has tried to let go of the other’s hand.

“No,” Fjord says, honestly. He isn’t. It still feels like a dream, a beautiful and precious one that will melt into mist upon waking. “But I want to be. I could spend a whole lifetime trying, I think.”

Caduceus nods. “It’s really beautiful,” he says, and Fjord doesn’t know if he means helping Cara, or the sunset they are watching, or this life, or all of it, and he doesn’t need to ask anyway because he would agree to all or any of it as they stand outside and watch the world quietly fold itself into darkness.

\---

There are two consequences to the fact that Caduceus delivers Cara and Vin’s baby. The first is that Sildar’s visit to their cottage seems to give the rest of the village tacit permission to visit also, and for the first time since their arrival visitors come knocking on their door.

The second consequence is that most of them come looking for Caduceus. At first it’s mostly pregnant women, but after Caduceus reiterates to the first one or two that he’s really more experienced with other kinds of healing, they show up for anything—chest colds, broken fingers, festering wounds, arthritis. 

“It’s been hard, without a healer,” Delia, five months pregnant, informs them both. She and Caduceus sit at the little table. Fjord is hanging laundry, an awkward task that involves walking through the room half a dozen times and incidentally hearing most of the conversation. “There’s a midwife in Nicodranas, and a doctor up in Eldenton, but they don’t come through very much and we don’t fetch them for most things. And you saved Cara’s life.”

“I don’t know about that,” Caduceus says.

“They had a baby before,” she says, frankly. “It died. The midwife said another one would kill Cara too, probably. But she’s fine and so is the baby and she says it’s because of you. She says you asked the Wildmother and She healed her. Is that true?”

“That’s true enough,” Caduceus says, slowly. “What power I have is a gift from Her. But what I do—or what I can’t do—it can’t be laid at Her feet, either. It is thanks to Her, but…”

Delia nods. “Your service to Her has given you her powers, but it is your work that made Cara live.”

“Well,” Caduceus says, and shakes his head. “I meant to say that if I can’t save someone, it’s not because the Wildmother has failed or abandoned them. There is a limit to what I can channel that is not a limit to Her.”

“Of course,” Delia says. “We don’t expect miracles.”

Fjord is coming back into the house when she says it and he can’t fully stifle the little laugh that comes out. She turns to look over her shoulder at him; Caduceus sighs a little.

“What?” Delia says, interested.

“Nothing,” Caduceus tries to say.

“I don’t know,” Fjord says, smiling at him. “I’ve seen a few.”

Caduceus rolls his eyes but he looks too pleased to really be angry.

The wounds and illnesses come at about the frequency that Fjord would expect for a village of their size. The babies seem to be somehow far more frequent than Fjord ever thought possible. Partially he knows that it’s bias—the broken legs, the blood, Caduceus never bats an eye, but he still seems shaken every time someone comes to ask him to play midwife.

One woman comes from the town of Saulterwauld, what must be a three hour’s ride away—they don’t have a midwife, she explains, and there was no one she knew of nearer, and her wife had to hold her upright in the saddle—and that is the baby that Caduceus delivers on the floor in the kitchen, and it’s a little red-skinned tiefling who sucks on her own tail as Caduceus holds her and that is when Fjord starts dreaming about children.

Half-orcs. Quarter orcs. Tieflings—could Fjord father a tiefling? No, Uk’otoa wasn’t a demon, whatever he was. Firbolgs. He’s never seen a firbolg baby but that doesn’t stop his imagination, because it must be Caduceus but smaller, right, much smaller. It isn’t that Fjord never wanted children. It’s just been one of those things that has never borne thinking about, and he never had much of a parental figure to imagine himself emulating.

Now he imagines, though. Wonders what he would be like as a father—thinks, sometimes, on the nights he lies awake and his wishes for the future slide like soft-boiled eggs against his consciousness, that he might be okay at it. That if he doesn’t know what a father would have been like, at least he knows what he wished a father was there to do. And there’s Caduceus and his big loving family who surely has a better blueprint, and Fjord is well-practiced at learning from him anyway.

“Do you want one, do you think?” Caduceus asks, conversationally, when he comes in late and Fjord wakes and props himself up on an elbow to watch him undress.

“Want what?”

“Children. A child. Start with one, I think.”

“I—“ Fjord shakes his head even though he knows Caduceus can’t see him in the darkness, feeling like his mind’s been read. “Yes. Do you?”

“Well, yes.”

“Now?” Fjord asks, sitting up all the way.

“Are you ready now?”

“I—think so. Do you—are you—“

“I think this is a good place for it,” Caduceus says. “I always thought I’d have a family.”

Fjord didn’t. Fjord never dared to think it. He swallows hard. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want to…”

Caduceus is halfway in bed now but he pauses, and says quietly into the dark, “Wildmother, we’d like to…”

“Start a family,” Fjord suggests, when Caduceus pauses.

“…we have a family. Grow our family a little, if You’ll help us.” Then he finishes getting in bed.

“Did She…ah. Hear?”

Caduceus shrugs, and Fjord laughs, feeling ridiculous and full of nerves and joy, and reaches for him.

\---

It is Anders who comes up the hill to bring them down to the beach that first year. “Olivia thought you might want to come down for Hallowtide,” he said.

It takes Fjord a moment to remember Olivia is his wife, and then he’s still staring blankly.

Anders notices his confusion. “Port Damali might be too big for it, come to think. Too many big gods. But we’re still about the little spirits.”

“Sorry,” Fjord says, reaching unconsciously for the symbol pinned to his breast, feeling vaguely guilty that Anders remembers Fjord’s hometown but Fjord can’t even keep Olivia’s name straight. “What is this about?”

“Surprised no one mentioned it,” he says. “A ceremony for the dead. You make a boat, you put a little candle in it. They say the souls that are lost out there can ride their way to the other planes on the little flames.”

“You do this every year?” Fjord asks.

Anders nods. “For all the folks lost at sea,” he says. “And all the folks we lose besides. It’s a good way to remember. Unless you think your god would mind.”

“It’s beautiful,” Caduceus says, shaking his head. “And no grieving—or worship, if it were that—would trouble Her.”

“Glad you think so. Olivia made a boat for each of you,” Anders says. “I told her you may not like it. Like I said, it’s mostly just the fishing villages that do it anymore. People think it’s sad.”

“Grief is,” Caduceus shrugs. “Doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful.”

“The Clay family are gravekeepers,” Fjord says, catching Anders’ expression, a mix between impressed and bemused. “He grew up in a graveyard.”

“Well, in a house, in a graveyard,” Caduceus says. “We didn’t, ahh—the Clay family are keepers of a temple and our duty is to honor those who have lived a good life in the name of the Wildmother.”

“And you decided to become a midwife?”

Anders walks slow down the path in the twilight, which makes Fjord very aware of his night vision, superior to both human and firbolg. He puts a hand on Caduceus’ arm to guide him.

“The midwifery was—incidental?” Caduceus hedges. “I’m a—healer. You all have a lot of babies.”

Anders laughs. “Birth and death, huh?”

“Natural things, both of them,” Caduceus says.

“And what are you two going to do?

“Well, die, eventually,” Caduceus says, bewildered.

Anders stares at him, then laughs, full throated. “About the baby.”

“Oh! No idea,” Caduceus says, cheerfully. “I thought we’d go home. My parents managed it a few times. I have a couple sisters and a brother.”

“Where’s home for you? Port Damali too?”

Caduceus shakes his head. “North,” he says.

“Up the coast?”

“North and east,” Caduceus amends. “The Savalierwood.”

“That’s a long way from here,” Anders says, after a pause. Fjord understands his confusion. A man coming from Port Damali was understandable, if still a little unusual, but most of these people had lived their entire lives in one town. The sort of pilgrimage that had defined Caduceus’ life was out of the realm of Anders’ experience.

“I suppose,” Caduceus says.

“A long way to travel, considering...”

“Oh,” Caduceus says. “Maybe we’ll go see Caleb, then, and go through Uthodurn.”

This fails to enlighten Anders, but Fjord is sort of enjoying his obvious confusion at this point and doesn’t choose to enlighten him—or bemuse him further—with the word “teleport”. Caduceus remains oblivious, or at least feigning it, and the quiet persists all the way down through the village to the shore. The lanterns are lit, but it’s strange and quiet and empty, unusual for the dusk hours.

Olivia comes to meet them, her arms full of wooden boats and candles, as they approach the water. Everyone Fjord has ever met in the village and everyone he hasn’t met yet seems to have congregated along the coastline. Olivia hands him a wooden boat—a rough-hewn version of a sailing ship—and a tall white candle. Fjord thanks her and she waves him off, passing Caduceus what looks like a patterned canoe. “I like to initiate people. Been doing this since I was a girl.”

They light the candles; most of the other people are doing the same, creating a strange little glowing miniature fleet, carried in their arms. The sun is dipping down below the horizon, casting a growing dark upon the water.

“Shall we begin?” a man who Fjord vaguely recognizes from the market asks.

“To the dead!” calls out Mel, the pub owner, in a mock toast.

“We have a priest now,” Olivia says, the wrinkles and angles of her face lit oddly by the flickering candlelight, casting shadows of paper sails across her forehead. She gestures towards Caduceus. “Perhaps he’d like to say a few words?”

At that, everyone turns to look at him and Caduceus—Fjord shifts uncomfortably, gripping the wooden boat. But their eyes are mostly curious or warm. A half-orc is not so troubling for the people of the Menagerie Coast, and a month or two has made them known to most of them. Still, it’s something, to have the eyes of a town on him—or on Caduceus, who is a foot taller and draws looks easily.

Fjord has seen Caduceus panic in crowds before, but this loose gathering of the village doesn’t seem to bother him. He remains perfectly at ease under their attention even without forewarning, even as the crowd breaks apart a little to make a path for him through the sand. He picks his way carefully down towards the water; Fjord moves in his wake only after Olivia nudges him to follow.

Caduceus’ own face is lit by the glow of the boat he holds before him, that little carved canoe; his fingers brush delicately over the detailing on the edge as he regards the gathered crowd before turning out towards the sea.

“Unquiet spirits,” Caduceus says, to the salt-thick air, and his eyes are focused as though he is really seeing ghosts rising from the water before him. “May you use these lights to guide you to the other side. If you have unfinished business, may you make peace with it and give over what you have left undone to the living. May you find peace in returning to the Mother, in Her sea or Her earth or Her air. May you find release from the chains that bind you, and may you find your way home.”

Fjord is used to the effect that Caduceus, at his most holy, has on him—the odd illusory echo of his deep voice, the sense that the wind that curls around him is alive and the world is breathing with him. He never believes more strongly—in the Wildmother or in his husband—as he does in those moments, when Caduceus is bathed in Her light and when Fjord can feel the brilliance of it by proximity alone. It is strange to see the effect ripple through a whole congregation like the surface of water struck by a stone. They echo Caduceus raggedly—“May you find your way home,” rising in dozens of different voices, overlapping in a broken chorus around him.

Fjord can see his intent before Caduceus acts, and reaches out to take his elbow to help him kneel in the wet sand. Caduceus smiles at him, beatific in the strange effect of the candlelight on top of the water. He sets the little boat in the tide, and then everyone is doing it, a little fleet of glowing ships bobbing out into the waves, and Fjord lowers his own boat slowly, hand still on Caduceus’ arm.

They stay there, watching the boats sail out, drawn out and back by the waves, each cycle drawing them slowly further and further away. Olivia and Anders come to join them after a few minutes, and Olivia smiles warmly at them both. “Anders said you’d never heard of Hallowtide. Anyone would think you’d done it before.”

Anders nods and says, gruffly, “A good prayer.”

“Who did you lose?” Caduceus asks, apropos of nothing.

“Our son,” Olivia says, after a startled pause. “Twenty years ago, now. A bad storm.”

“I’m sorry,” Fjord says.

“How did you know?” Anders asks. He has the vague alarm that Fjord recognizes from his own early conversations with Caduceus.

“Oh, you know,” Caduceus says, vaguely, and then his eyes sharpen a little and he adds, looking at them, “The sea was a second home to him. I’m sure he’s found peace within it.”

Olivia and Anders are staring; Caduceus brushes his knees off and then relies on Fjord to stand back up. The four of them pick their way slowly from the beach, back up the sand and into the village, which is starting to become filled again. The older couple walks them back through the handful of streets to the path up the cliff.

“Thank you,” Olivia says to Caduceus, sincerely, who just smiles at her.

“Thank you, for showing us this and for the boats. You’re too kind,” Fjord says.

“No trouble,” says Anders. “Take care, now. Do you need to borrow a lantern?”

“I see alright,” Fjord says, a little uncomfortably. He doesn’t like reminding them of his nonhuman heritage, somehow, still, although they can hardly forget it looking at him.

Caduceus smiles and taps Fjord on the shoulder with a murmur and suddenly his coat is ablaze with Light. “We’ll be fine.”

“I see you’ve got your own light,” Anders laughs.

“Always,” Caduceus says, so sincerely that Fjord can feel his face heat. He bids them a hasty goodbye and they start up the path.

“That was beautiful,” Fjord says, once they’ve gained a little distance.

Caduceus nods. “A good way to remember.”

“And kind of them. Twenty years. I can’t imagine missing someone twenty years.” He glances at Caduceus. “Well, your family—“

“I had faith,” Caduceus says. “A different sort of grief, maybe. You know, we haven’t even met her and I can’t imagine losing her.”

Losing a child. Fjord’s isn’t even born and he can’t imagine it. But grief in general is a difficult thing for him to wrap his head around. He hasn’t truly grieved a terrible loss before; never had anything he couldn’t bear losing before. Now—he can’t imagine losing Caduceus. Can hardly imagine a day without him. Twenty years is near unfathomable. “Do you think it gets easier?”

“Oh,” Caduceus says, “Everything gets easier, I think.”

\---

The winter rain is falling hard enough to make the path down to the village slick and treacherous, and the garden is mostly bare—some herbs, of course, and what Caduceus called winter melons are still heavy on the vine, but the rest of the vegetables all were harvested in the summer and fall, so there’s no excuse for tending the garden. Besides, it’s cold—it may not snow so far south, but the wind off the sea is biting and the raindrops don’t feel too far from ice.

So they stay inside, fire banked up high; some sort of rich mushroom stew simmers, filling the cottage with a delicious earthy scent. Caduceus sits at the table with his eyes half-lidded while Fjord reads aloud, a book of myths that Caleb had gifted them both.

“...and when the celebrating crowds left the palace they cried out, for the river ran clear again, as the prince had been returned to his rightful place, and the curse laid by his grandfather was broken by their marriage.

“And the new king and queen ruled together and they and the kingdom lived happily ever after.” Fjord glances up at Caduceus, who blinks slowly back at him.

“Hmm,” Caduceus says. “That’s a nice story. You have a nice voice.”

Fjord married the man, and still every casually administered compliment throws him, makes blood heat beneath his skin. “I can read another,” Fjord offers.

“Maybe in a moment,” Caduceus smiles at him. “I’ve been meaning to ask. Have you thought about names?”

“Yes,” Fjord admits. “Have you?”

“Yes,” Caduceus says. “We’ll want to call her the right thing. Might be worth picking it out. Although maybe when she’s born we’ll realize she should be called something else. It happens.”

“I suppose,” says Fjord, who knows nothing of naming children except that he wants to do it nothing like the orphanage did. In which case Caduceus is right about putting thought into it. As he is considering this, his mind catches up to Caduceus’ words. “Did you say ‘her’?”

“Well, she’s not anything yet,” he says. His eyes are fully open now, looking warmly at Fjord. “And she could end up deciding otherwise—I did—but I dreamed about a girl.”

“You dreamed about her,” Fjord says.

“Sure,” Caduceus says. “Is that odd? My mother dreamed about all of us. She said her father dreamed about her and Corrin.”

“I don’t know,” Fjord says. “That’s—I like that. A girl. Girl’s names. Do you know, I don’t have any ideas?” He laughs. “I’ve thought about it and I don’t know where to begin. We could call her after your mother.”

Caduceus shakes his head. “Bad luck.”

“Really? I thought it was respectful.”

“To be named after the dead? Yes. But bad luck to call them after the living.”

Fjord nods. “Alright, fair enough. Did you have any ideas?”

“A few. I had thought Coral, maybe. Or Calypso.”

“Does it have to be a ‘C’ name?” Fjord asks, out of curiosity more than objection.

“A sea name? No. I just thought you’d like it.”

“I’d like it?” Fjord blinks, confused. “I thought it was...”

“I mean,” Caduceus says. “We live near it, it’s always meant a lot to you, I know it’s how you feel closest to the Wildmother. So it seemed fitting.”

Understanding arrives like the strike of a match. “Not an ocean name. A ‘C’ name.”

“Are they different?” Caduceus says, interested. “I thought they meant the same thing.”

“Are what different?”

“A sea and an ocean.”

“A—no. C. The letter ‘C’. Caduceus. Clarabelle...”

“Oh!” Caduceus laughs at himself. “No. Just a little tradition. We don’t have to if you don’t want.”

“No,” Fjord decides quickly. He likes tradition—he doesn’t have much of his own on account of not having family, but he loves the tradition of the Wildmother, and that of the Clays, even the little silly ones like giving their children ‘C’ names. They have taken him in so wholeheartedly—he still takes pleasure in introducing himself in two pieces, how it sounds to be more than just Fjord. “I like it. C it is.”

“Alright,” Caduceus says.

Fjord stares around the kitchen for inspiration. “Chanterelle. Chamomile. Don’t listen to me, we’re not naming her after food.”

“Chanterelle’s not bad,” Caduceus comments. “Good nicknames.”

“Elle,” Fjord says. “Is that important? Nicknames?”

“Well, all of mine are awful,” Caduceus says, frowning.

“Oh—“ Fjord says, a little stricken. “Do you mind it?”

“I‘m old enough not to be bothered,” he says. “Don’t worry. But children can be cruel, so—“

“No, you’re right,” Fjord says. “No cruel nicknames.”

Caduceus nods. “Tea?” When Fjord nods, he stands up and fills the kettle. Fjord watches him, thinking.

“I do like—the ocean idea. She’ll grow up beside it. I like that she might feel connected.” Fjord knows the ocean isn’t really safe for him anymore, not the middle of it anyway, but he still doesn’t really fear it. And it would be cruel to deny his child—his daughter, if Caduceus’ dream is to be believed—that connection even as she grows up along a shoreline. Another thought occurs to him. “You said—naming after the dead is alright?”

“Yes. Like you said—it’s respectful. A good way to preserve memory. Some people say it can give them a connection, but I’m not sure I believe that. It’s not bad luck, anyway.” He sets the kettle on the stove and steps back, leaning against the wall. The soft grey square of light from the window falls in a patch across his shoulder and cheek.

“I was just thinking about Mollymauk,” Fjord says, after a moment.

“That’s a good name,” Caduceus says. “They call them albatross here, don’t they?”

Fjord nods. “Not a C, though.”

“But a seabird,” Caduceus says. “Well. How about that?” He is looking out the window. After another second, he raises a hand and points.

Fjord gets up and stands beside him. On the fence post is a bird—black, long necked, probably blown in off the ocean on the winter storm. When it turns its head he can see a patch of white like snow on its throat and chest. “Cormorant,” Caduceus says, satisfied.

“Cormorant,” Fjord echoes. “Mora. Cory.”

“Cory,” Caduceus says. The bird has shifted to look at them, and Caduceus raises a hand in a wave. The way the head bobs almost resembles a nod as it takes off.

“Cory,” Fjord repeats it. “Cormorant Clay.”

“Cormorant Clay,” Caduceus says back. He smiles as he says it, and Fjord is suddenly overwhelmed. He leans against him, turns from the window so he can tuck his face against Caduceus’ chest, and feels Caduceus’ arms come up to hold him. Fjord thinks he might be trembling a little, not in a bad way but in the way he felt when he first felt the Wildmother, like he’s just seen the world through Her eyes for a split second. Even a few years ago, Fjord wouldn’t have believed you could feel the divine like that, especially in something so small as a seabird.

Even a few years ago, Fjord was a fool. He knows that now.

He lets Caduceus hold him, brimming over with strange shattering joy, until the kettle begins to shriek behind them.

\---

Fjord’s mind has never been terribly kind to him, so of course he has the dream only a few nights after. He no longer has the same need he once did for imagination. He has traveled half the continent. He has seen battles and death and celebrations; he has been married, surrounded by people who loved him—surrounded! How could there be enough of them, for someone who once was all alone in the world—and he no longer needs fantasy to envision any degree of joy or pain.

He has seen Caduceus fall, long enough ago that he did not know in that moment what he almost lost, but not so long ago the memory does not occasionally slip out from the place it is carefully locked away and into his subconscious.

Caduceus, dead on the stone ground, the way the ear not shredded by the blast lay limp—that is the image that he dreams. But this Caduceus is alive, eyes open and glassy rather than peacefully shut. (At least in death, burned and broken, Caduceus had the decency to look as though he might be sleeping.) In the place of that dark cave under the Well, he is in their back garden, half-crushing the mint. And he is bleeding, steadily, from no place in particular but enough to soak his clothes, stain Fjord’s hands, tinge the light red.

“No,” Fjord chokes on the word. “Caduceus—no, this can’t be happening—“

He says it, but in the dream it doesn’t occur to him that it isn’t  _ actually  _ happening. It is too real. All of the pieces of it are real, after all. His mind has simply jigsawed it into something holistic and monstrous and terrifying. 

Caduceus opens his mouth, but blood drips out instead of words. He isn’t coughing it out or anything—it just comes, like water spilling down over the sides of a roof when it rains.

“What did I do?” Fjord demands of him, of the Wildmother—because he knows, in the same way that you know anything in a dream, that this is his fault. He has overstepped. He has asked for too much, hoped for too much. “Whatever it is I’ll fix it, I take it back, please…”

He remembers, belatedly, that he can heal. He presses his hands to Caduceus, but no warm light comes, no itching fluttering healing. He has practiced it enough that he knows how it works but in the dream it does not come. Instead, water spills out from his hands, like it used to when he had the falchion, except that water too is red.

“No,” he whimpers, and pulls Caduceus to him, but he can’t find a wound to put pressure on, there’s just blood, everywhere, and Caduceus limp in his arms—

“Wildmother,” he gasps, “ _ Wildmother--!” _

He wakes sweating, tangled in the sheets, a wordless shout in his throat. He’s woken Caduceus, who is twisting in his arms, trying to see him. “Fjord,” he says, “What’s wrong?”

“You were—bleeding, you were dying, you had died,” Fjord says in a horrible rush. “Oh, gods.”

“I’m fine,” Caduceus says, soothingly. He reaches a hand out and cups Fjord’s cheek. “See?”

“Now but—” Fjord can’t even articulate the fears swimming in his head, which is probably an indication that they are the foolish panicked threads of someone barely awoken from a nightmare, but he cannot stop them. He pulls back, sits up, tries to unknot himself from the blankets. “What about later?”

“What  _ about  _ later?” Caduceus doesn’t move, blinking at him from his prone position on the mattress.

“With—we’re having a  _ kid _ , we live right by the ocean, anything could  _ happen _ …” Fjord knows, he knows that this is foolish. Knows Caduceus will tell him so. Saying the words, at least, feels like an act of exorcism.

“It’ll be fine,” Caduceus says, voice soft. He sits up and the quilt falls into his lap.

“You don’t know that.” Fjord grips the sheet with his fingers, absently grateful that his claws are filed down so he doesn’t have to worry about tearing up the fabric.

“I know it’s very likely,” Caduceus says.

“You’re the one who says dreams mean something,” Fjord says. To his horror, he feels his throat tightening.

“They do,” Caduceus says, and scoots towards him. Fjord looks away but Caduceus takes his face in his hands. “Look at me?”

Fjord looks. Caduceus looks soft, breakable, smiling at him through a curtain of tangled hair.

“They do,” Caduceus repeats. “But I think this one just means you’re afraid.”

\---

Caduceus is right. Everything is fine.

When they go back to Bluecove, Essek drops them off in Nicodranas, because it is the closest he has been and he knows a perfectly clear room to teleport into. None of them suggest that it’s worth the risk of teleporting to an unfamiliar place to get closer—with a month-old child, it absolutely isn’t. Fjord might be willing to risk a twenty-foot plummet but he is not willing to risk that with his newborn daughter.

His daughter. He can’t get over that, not for the month they spent at the Blooming Grove, not now that they are returning home with promises to visit again soon. Can’t get over the miracle of her existence, how small her feet are, the curve of her little ears. Her skin is very soft but she isn’t furry the same way Caduceus is, although her ears are fuzzy like a lamb’s. Her skin is moonstone grey. Her eyes are a golden amber, closer to Fjord’s than Caduceus’. She is a little smaller than your average firbolg baby, Constance tells him, but that doesn’t mean anything because so was Caduceus.

Constance Clay is the first person to hold her. She howls in her grandmother’s arms while someone makes a quip about lung capacity. Then Caduceus gets her, and somehow quiets her to ask for the blessing of the Wildmother on her before giving her to Fjord. So Fjord is the third, and he stares at her perfect little face and then he cries until she starts crying again in some underdeveloped sympathetic response.

“All babies cry a lot, right?” he says, wiping at his face with his sleeve.

“Some more than others,” Constance says.

Fjord doesn’t know what he was like and he wishes he did, just for comparison. “What about Caduceus? Did he cry a lot?”

“Nope,” Calliope answers. “Quietest baby ever. The first night they had him Mom thought he’d died.”

Constance asks her name hours later. Caduceus is asleep then and Fjord is holding her, staring at her face. He can’t stop staring at her.

“Cormorant,” Fjord says. “Cormorant Clay.”

Constance smiles. “That’s a good name,” she says.

Corrin makes a quiet sign of invocation above her. “Clear skies, little bird.”

So it transpires that Essek is the first outside the Clay family to hold her, because when he arrives to bring them home at Caduceus’ request, Fjord offers immediately.

“I—don’t know how,” Essek says, stiffly, like it hurts to admit.

“One arm here,” Fjord says, like he’s become an expert on baby holding—which to be fair, he has. He shows Essek how to support her head. She stares up at him. He stares back.

“She looks like you,” Essek says, finally. Fjord half expects him to shove her back at the first opportunity but once she’s in his arms, he holds her for a long time.

They offer for him to come back to Bluecove with them, too, but he declines. He clearly thinks about it, though. If Fjord had known all it took to win Essek over was a baby—well, he probably wouldn’t have had one years ago, but it is a thought.

It is nearly a day’s ride to Bluecove from Nicodranas, and slowed with a baby the sun is dropping down over the horizon by the time they arrive. The market is shutting down, but people are still out, lighting candles, hanging lanterns. Sildar is packing away his goods when they pass through and he greets them loud enough to summon half the street.

It feels like a dream. Cormorant feels like a dream, too precious and perfect a thing to be born of him. His neighbors spilling over, offering congratulations and commenting and giving advice and offering to bring food, some old clothes their child outgrew, looking at her. Surrounded by a crowd of people all looking at him and sensing nothing but sincerity and love is a feeling Fjord suspects he will never get used to.

The cottage is clean and the shelves are stocked. Olivia has left a note on the table— _ hope you don’t mind the intrusion; I remember wanting it when I had a child _ —and Fjord feels oddly like he’s going to cry when he reads it. He doesn’t, but it feels like it, like he is a cup spilling over.

Cory sleeps in the crib that night, on and off. She needs a bottle about every four hours; when she doesn’t wake on time, Fjord does anyway, and stands beside her looking at her sleeping face in the perfect spill of moonlight, his own indescribable joy itching underneath his skin.

“Fjord,” Caduceus says, softly. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Fjord says. “You can go to sleep.”

“I woke up since you were gone,” Caduceus says, plainly. “Why are you up? She’s all right.”

“I—“ Fjord shakes his head. “I am very happy.”

“Oh,” Caduceus says. “Me too. Can you be happy in bed with me?”

“Always,” Fjord returns with some emphasis, just to see Caduceus flush a little as the meaning becomes clear. “Alright. Let’s go to bed.”

“She’ll wake us up plenty,” Caduceus says, yawning. “You’ll see.”

Fjord thinks of her perfect little face as they lie back down and fits Caduceus into his arms. She might keep them up, but when he looks at her he doesn’t think he’ll ever find it in him to mind.

\---

“Your turn,” Fjord says, shaking Caduceus’ shoulder when he wakes to the dulcet tones of Cormorant shrieking her lungs out. Caduceus doesn’t stir. “Your turn, Caduceus. Deucey.”

Caduceus groans and sits up. Fjord has grown accustomed to exercising extreme care in bed with Caduceus given how light a sleeper he is, and it would be rewarding to watch him unlearn hypervigilance if it didn’t mean that Fjord had to listen to Cormorant continue to cry. “Didn’t she just eat?” Caduceus says.

Fjord checks the clock; it’s too soon for another bottle. “Diaper?” he suggests.

The idea that their baby might be experiencing discomfort does get Caduceus out of bed. The crying stops shortly thereafter and Fjord slips back into a doze. He’s most of the way asleep when Caduceus returns, rocking Cory, singing under his breath.

“Get her diaper changed?” Fjord mumbles.

“She’s fine,” Caduceus says. “Just wants to be held.”

“Put her back to bed.”

“I tried. She starts crying again.”

Fjord squints at them. Cormorant does seem perfectly happy now, carefully cradled.

“Maybe she’s asleep,” Fjord suggests.

Caduceus looks long-suffering, but dutifully goes to put her in the crib. He has barely vanished down the hall when the crying starts again. Caduceus returns, arms still full of quarter-orc half-firbolg baby.

“What did your parents do?” Fjord asks.

“I don’t know,” Caduceus says. “Cast Silence and ignore us, maybe.”

“Would that...work?”

“No,” Caduceus says. “It only lasts ten minutes.”

Fjord’s eyes slip shut again. “Okay...”

He feels rather than sees the sweep of Caduceus’ hair against his cheek when he bends down and the kiss is pressed to his temple. “I have her. Go to sleep.”

Pre-baby, Fjord thinks he would have considered it noble to stay up, to insist on keeping Caduceus company. Now he knows better—he nods blearily and passes out again instantly.

Those first few months are simultaneously the most wonderful and most terrifying time of Fjord’s life. Seeing her grow—her hair turn from dark fuzz to soft black curls, her gaze grow sharper, how she begins to babble what might be halfway words although she still cries for attention more often, the first time Fjord hears her laugh and just bursts into tears in the entryway—it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

On the other hand, he’s nervous the second she’s out of his sight, exhausted half the time she’s in it. When he gets in bed at night he deliberately doesn’t think about how long it will last, staring up at the ceiling.

Soft footsteps. The door opens and Caduceus slips in.

“Cory?” Fjord asks, quietly, as he shuts the door.

“Asleep,” Caduceus says. “For now.” He sounds rueful. For his part, Fjord entertains frequent vivid daydreams about their daughter sleeping through the night. In the meantime, they alternate.

Exhaustion stands out on Caduceus in a way that Fjord wouldn’t have recognized five years ago. Now he knows him so well that he can spot every shade darker the bruises under his eyes become, every breath that comes a little bit heavier, the way he walks extra-perfectly when his body is trying to limp on his crippled knee. Fjord sometimes offers to take over more of it, but Caduceus always refuses, and Fjord doesn’t have any parental advice to back up an objection when Caduceus insists on an even load.

Besides, even through the obvious strain of it, Caduceus is crystal clear, over-flowingly happy. Fjord recognizes that because he is too—it is a life he could not have imagined before and yet somehow it is a perfect match to what he has always wanted.

It is strange to be a parent. It makes him hate his absent ones, the ones who left him on the steps of an orphanage, in a way that he has never really felt before. Before, he had always justified it somehow—he was a half-orc. He was just Fjord. But it is less comprehensible from the other end of the telescope, the father to the child. He feels his love for Cory so fiercely. It makes it easier to hate anyone, even the shadowy image of a person, who would not.

Caduceus strips off his shirt to change for bed. Fjord watches him do it, in the shaft of moonlight through the window. The glow of it illuminates the myriad lattice of scars on Caduceus’ torso. Fjord has them too, all the little and big cuts from battle, and the few deeper wounds—the burn scars on Caduceus, and the dual knife marks in his back; the heavy scar that spreads straight across the middle of Fjord’s chest.

“Hard to believe it’s all over,” Fjord says, looking at Caduceus’ back when he turns to retrieve a nightshirt from the drawer.

“What is?”

“The—fighting. The everything.”

“It’s not over,” Caduceus says.

Fjord’s heart stops. For a second, his heartbeat pounding too loud in his ears, he is convinced he has misheard. “What?”

“We won the battles,” Caduceus says. “But the war isn’t over, is it? Uk’otoa is still out there. That dragon. Maybe someday Isharnai figures out what Jester did.”

“Do you think they’ll come for us?” Fjord asks, sharply.

“No,” Caduceus says, and then catches the wild look on Fjord’s face. “Oh, no. No. That’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean,” Fjord asks, heart hammering.

“We wouldn’t be here if I thought we wouldn’t be safe,” Caduceus says, as usual knowing exactly what Fjord is thinking, although this time he thinks his train of thought may be obvious. Caduceus drops the shirt on the bed and comes over to Fjord and hugs him. Fjord’s fingers automatically find the knife scars and cover them, as though stopping some ancient bleed.

“It’s not over, but we’re safe?”

“It’s more like,” Caduceus says, slowly. “A forest. It grows, and dies, and grows. Something is growing now and will be growing still. The world is a forest. There was a terrible beast in it, and we drove it away, but someday it will come again. Maybe that will be a long time from now. Someone else will pick up the sword.”

Caduceus’ voice is a low rumble in his chest; Fjord can feel it with Caduceus pressed against him. It makes his frantic heartbeat settle down. “We’re safe,” Fjord says.

“We’re safe. Cory is safe. We have done what we were called to do, and the Wildmother has rewarded us. Maybe someday there will be more to do. But I think we have found good work here.”

Fjord nods. “And as her champion...”

“As her champion, you’ve saved people and slain monsters. It’s good work. So is this.”

“Being here?” Fjord tries to imagine what work the Wildmother could have for him here. All it conjures is an image of Uk’otoa, lurking out in the ocean for him.

“Putting down roots,” Caduceus says. “Growing things.”

Fjord nods. “She’s okay with that?”

“It’s nature,” Caduceus says. “No one can fight forever. One way to be a champion is to confront the darkness.”

Fjord has done that. Uk’otoa. Obann. So many monsters. He has wielded his blade gladly, for her. “And the other way?”

“To make light,” Caduceus says.

\---

Fjord is giving Cory her bottle when Caduceus looks up, all of a sudden, from the herbs he’s carefully tying into bundles at the kitchen table. “Fjord,” he says.

“Yes?” Fjord looks up from Cory, who is still sucking happily. A single spot of white pokes through her bottom gumline—a little early for a human, apparently, but Fjord would bet anything it’s a tusk coming in.

He prays she will never have cause to hate them. His are grown in fully, these days, visible to all. He’s...not not-proud of them, anyway. And there was real delight in Caduceus‘ voice when he pointed out that first speck of tusk to Fjord, so—he thinks he’ll be fine with it. He is fine with it.

The truth is they don’t really know how things will turn out. Beau and Caleb, to no real surprise, have failed to turn up any information about half-firbolg quarter-orc quarter-human babies—or half-firbolg anything, really. Firbolg keep to themselves, mostly. Keep to their own kind.

So they play it by ear. Fjord is terrified, a little, and sometimes Caduceus smiles when he mentions things about how fast she’ll grow up and when she’ll start talking and all of those little uncertain milestones, and so he knows that Caduceus is terrified too. At least they’re in it together.

Caduceus says, still very quiet, “When she’s in bed tonight, will you do something with me?”

“Of course,” Fjord says. He does not ask what it is. If Caduceus is asking, if Caduceus needs him, it will always be a yes.

Caduceus nods. He goes back to the herbs, until Cormorant finishes the bottle. Then he comes with Fjord when he tucks her in.

“Reading to her tonight?” Caduceus asks. She likes Fjord’s voice, although he’s not really sure how much she understands of the stories. Some of them are very simple, things she probably could understand if she really had words yet—baby dragon gets bottle, baby dragon plays with toy, baby dragon goes to bed. Some of her books are well beyond the comprehension of a year-old baby, even of a short-lived species. Fjord suspects that Caleb understands very little about child development.

“You should sing,” Fjord says, instead, because she likes that too and he thinks it may help settle Caduceus, who still has an odd frightened energy about him. It feels like a ritual, and Fjord knows how those can bring comfort.

And he would be lying if he said that he didn’t like to listen to it, also.

Caduceus nods. He comes over to the crib and stands next to Fjord, leans into him. Fjord recognizes the song he begins without comprehending it—it is in Sylvan, almost like Elven but more musical somehow. He has sung it to Cory before. Fjord tucks an arm around him, enjoying the way his deep voice seems to vibrate from his chest, steadying him.

Cormorant goes to sleep easily. Fjord feels relieved, but Caduceus doesn’t look it.

“Okay,” Fjord says, once they’ve stolen quietly out of the bedroom. “What are we doing?”

“This is,” Caduceus says, instead of answering, “Very selfish of me.”

“Even better,” Fjord says, meaning it. Caduceus deserves the damn world. Fjord can’t give it to him so he will give Caduceus everything else he can, particularly the things he tries to deny himself.

Caduceus nods but then just stands there for a moment. Fjord draws him into a quick, tight hug.  _ I am with you, _ he tries to say with it. It seems to steady Caduceus a little. When he draws back he walks to the cupboard, comes back with incense. Goes out to the garden and comes back with a squash, which he cuts swiftly in half. Lights the incense. The fragrant smoke swells. Caduceus lights the gourd and it burns odd but sweet. An offering.

“Commune?” Fjord asks, quietly.

“Divination,” Caduceus says. “I need—more than a yes or no.”

Fjord nods. Caduceus sits up, hands on his knees, palms upward. Fjord puts his hands in his and lets Caduceus grip his fingers tightly, grounds him. Slowly, the grip loosens as the trance takes hold.

Fjord knows, somehow, maybe because he feels Her too or maybe because he can see it in the way Caduceus’ posture shifts, when the Wildmother is listening. And Caduceus says, “I want to know about Cormorant. With what she is—if nothing out of the ordinary happens—no bad illness, or injury or accident or curse. In a natural life. How long will she have?”

Fjord hears the Wildmother’s voice when She answers. It is a woman’s voice, warm, motherly, and at the same time it is the wind, and the wave, and the crackle of the fire. And she says, “Oh, my Clay. With what she is, she may live a hundred and twenty summers.”

Fjord is shot through with relief. His deepest fear was that something about firbolg and half-orc was incompatible, that she would die terribly young. His second deepest was that she might age so slowly he didn’t live to see her grow up. A hundred and twenty years—that was good. Like Jester, like a tiefling or something. A longer-than-human life but not so long Fjord wouldn’t see her grow up, that she couldn’t marry and have children and see them grow up if that was where her life went.

“Thank you,” Caduceus says. Fjord feels Her somehow, how the wind seems to embrace Caduceus. The smoke from the incense and burnt offering clear. Caduceus comes out of the trance looking into Fjord’s eyes.

“Hey,” Fjord says, uncertain.

Caduceus draws his hands back. Very slowly, he cleans up. Fjord watches, uncertainly, as he moves the incense to the bucket of things to burn and the cabbage to the pail that will go out to the compost heap. He washes his hands. Then he turns back to Fjord.

“Now we know,” Fjord says, very quietly. He is waiting. It would be cruel to say it before Caduceus is ready, but worse to ignore it.

A hundred and twenty years is a long time for Fjord. He will go before Cory does and he will be able to raise her. Nature has been kind.

She has not been kind to Caduceus, who has always known that he will be young when he buries his husband and now knows he will be young, too, when he buries his daughter.

“We do,” Caduceus says. For a second Fjord thinks that will be all, that Caduceus will make an excuse and go to bed. But he stands there for a split second and Fjord, helpless, feeling guilty at his own relief when he knows it only brings Caduceus pain, opens his arms.

Caduceus crosses the room in two even strides and before Fjord has fully embraced him he is weeping.

“I’m sorry,” Fjord says, rubbing slow circles into his back. “I’m sorry, Deucey.”

“It’s good,” Caduceus says. He has the uncanny ability to speak clearly through his tears, which Fjord knows are still coming because he can feel them, damp and cold against his neck. “She’ll have you. She’ll grow up with you. You shouldn’t lose your parents too young.”

“You shouldn’t bury your children,” Fjord says, softly.

“I think I knew,” Caduceus says. “I knew it—it would always be shorter. This isn’t—it’s a good number, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Fjord says. “Enough time.”

“Alright,” Caduceus says. He breathes in, and out. The tears stop. “Alright.”

“You’re allowed to be sad,” Fjord says. “You’re allowed to—mourn.”

“For what?” Caduceus says. “You are here. She is asleep in the next room. All of you—Caleb and Jester and Nott and Beau and Yasha, I have you all still. I’ll grieve when I bury you and not before.”

“I love you,” Fjord says, in quiet awe. He isn’t sure, sometimes, how Caduceus lives with the weight of these things.

“I love you too,” Caduceus says, and as though he is reading Fjord’s mind—which Fjord knows he doesn’t, and merely knows him enough to guess—he adds, “You will go to the Mother, and I will go to Her and you, someday, so—in some ways I am the lucky one.”

“You won’t be alone,” Fjord promises. “Whatever happens—you won’t be alone. Cory’ll have kids and they’ll have kids, and Luc will grow up and have them at some point. Hell, we’ll adopt an elf baby.”

Caduceus laughs. “I think one is enough for now.”

As if she has inherited Caduceus’ preternatural hearing—she probably has, and that is a terrifying thought—Cory begins to babble in the other room.

“I’ve got her,” Caduceus says at the same time Fjord does, and so they go together—while they can, now, still—to coax her back to sleep.

\---

Cory does, eventually, sleep through the night—the first time, Fjord is convinced she’s died—and start to use words, and crawl about, and that terrifies Fjord too, because she’ll go through any cupboard she can reach and Fjord is terrified she’ll eat something she shouldn’t and apparently he sounds sufficiently panicked about it during a Sending to Jester that Veth comes up from Nicodranas and spends a very pleasant afternoon childproofing their house and viciously mocking him for it.

Veth is a good resource, and Luc a good babysitter, not that they need it when half the village volunteers and there’s Jester, too, who makes books just for Cormorant full of drawings of genitalia that Fjord does not want to explain to her yet, and weirdly Essek comes by every month or so and says oblique things that make it impossible to know whether his and Caleb’s on-again-off-again  _ thing  _ is off or on, but at least Cormorant loves him.

Cormorant is loved. Fjord didn’t realize that this would be his biggest fear, not before he had her, but now that he does all he can think is that his greatest wish in the world is that she will never feel unwanted.

He doesn’t think she will. There are too many people telling her otherwise.

Fjord spends a lot of time with her, and when he does chores or runs errands or helps in the village or at the shore, he brings her often. Caduceus spends time with her, too, but he’s more likely to be called away. He has become the village’s healer and priest and that seems to have spilled out a little into the surrounding countryside, and Fjord knows Caduceus worries about how much people trust him but it hasn’t been misplaced yet and it isn’t, it can’t be with someone as  _ good  _ as Caduceus is.

Even so, he’s a little startled when he brings Cory down to buy fish and comes back up and there’s a teenage girl sitting outside in the garden, a rucksack at her side.

“Hello,” Fjord says. “Do you—need help?”

“I want to learn to be a midwife,” she says, solidly. “I’ll stay here until he says yes.”

“Err,” Fjord says. “Right.” He darts inside; Caduceus is chopping tomatoes with a little more force than necessary. “Caduceus, there’s a—“

“I know,” Caduceus says. Cormorant decides right when she hears his voice to squirm and reach for him, so Fjord hands her over and takes the knife from him.

“I told her to go home,” Caduceus says. “But she won’t. I was trying to be nice about it but maybe I should have been scary? I can be scary.”

Caduceus can be, but he mostly looks a little lost, absently rocking Cory as he paces. Fjord thinks she’s a little big for it now—a year and a half—but she still prefers to nap in someone’s arms and what the hell does he know about child development, anyway?

“Why did you tell her to go?” Fjord is bewildered. “I know we don’t have much room but I’m sure we could clear some space. Or find her a room in the village.”

“I don’t mind giving her a place to stay,” Caduceus says. “But she wants to be an apprentice and she can’t do that here.”

“An apprentice...?”

“Midwife,” he answers. “One of the woman in Saulterwauld gave her my name.”

“You do that,” Fjord says. “Don’t you?” As far as Fjord is concerned a midwife delivers babies, and Fjord thinks that might be a third of the reason people come to their door.

“Sure. But I’m not a teacher,” Caduceus says. “Caleb is a teacher.”

“Yes?” Fjord says. “Well, you and Caleb would be different sorts of teachers.” Caleb is a professor, Fjord is pretty sure.

“Caleb is a good teacher,” says Caduceus.

“You—you’re a great healer,” Fjord protests. “And priest. Caduceus, you taught me.”

“I brought you to Her,” Caduceus corrects. “And you found your own way. I’m not—it wouldn’t be a good idea, I don’t think. To take an apprentice. I wouldn’t know what to tell her.”

“Well,” Fjord says. “What would you tell me?”

“What?”

“If I needed to know how to deliver a baby.”

“We didn’t do that,” Caduceus says, blinking. “We went all the way back home because you said it was such a terrible idea.”

“Okay,” Fjord says. “But that was—me, not you. Not her. What’s her name?”

“Didn’t you ask? You let her in.”

“I don’t remember,” Fjord says. “Because I’m an idiot, which is also why I can’t deliver a baby. But you can, and I think you could show someone else how to. If you wanted. You don’t have to,” he adds. “But I know you could.”

He shakes his head. “I’m not even a healer,” he says. “I’m a gravekeeper. The healing is…incidental.”

“You saved all our lives,” Fjord says. “Multiple times. And a lot of the people in this village. And people we ran into all over the continent! If she wants to learn from you, I can’t think of anyone better.”

“I’m just making it up as I go,” he says. “I keep asking the Wildmother for help.”

“Well, if anyone knows, She does,” Fjord says. “Really it’s as much of a direct line as that girl could get.”

Caduceus blinks. “Well. I suppose so.”

“Talk it through with her,” Fjord says. “We can’t leave her sitting in the garden. If you still think it’s a bad idea, we’ll find someone to escort her home.”

“Alright,” Caduceus agrees. “…her name’s Rheada, she said.”

Fjord nods and heads back outside. Rheada hasn’t budged an inch, which Fjord supposes bodes well. “Rheada,” he says. “Come have dinner. I hope you like fish.”

\---

Rheada is with them for three years. There isn’t a lot of room, but she makes herself useful—had three siblings herself, she says, which she and Caduceus promptly bond over—and it’s useful to have an extra set of hands with Cormorant, who seems to have developed a keen sense for trouble that sends her veering towards it like magnetism. She beelines for the water every time Fjord brings her down to the shoreline, splashing in the waves, staring out at the sunlight and calling back and forth to the gulls and terns and her namesake cormorants.

When she’s toddling around with no trouble, they go down in the summer afternoons to the shore and let her play in the sand, Rheada spending the afternoon reading or hanging out with the girls in the village as she pleases, enjoying the peace and absence of urgency that sometimes finds them in a place like this.

“She’s going to fall in love with the ocean,” Fjord frets as she splashes in the mud at the edge of the shore.

“And what if she does?” Caduceus is watching her carefully, as always—Fjord is always nervous about Cory getting hurt but he can’t imagine how he’d ever deal with it if Caduceus didn’t always have an eye on her, spotting trouble from miles away.

“What do I say? You can’t go out on a boat because a giant yellow-eyed tentacled sea snake fuck has it out for your dad?”

“Well,” Caduceus frowns, “I probably wouldn’t use the word fuck. And she could go out on a boat a little ways. If she wanted to fish.”

“Would it be a bad idea if she went out on the ocean? All the way, I mean.”

“I don’t know,” Caduceus says. “Only one way to know for sure, I think.”

“Oh, no. God, no.”

“What?” Caduceus blinks. “I was going to say we could ask Her, but—two ways, I suppose.”

“Oh. Gods.” Fjord laughs. “Oh, maybe. Yes. No stupid risks.”

“You used to be all about stupid risks,” Caduceus grins at him.

“I didn’t have a  _ three year old _ ,” Fjord says, and then jerks his head up in time to see Cormorant pick up a starfish and shove it towards her mouth. “No, drop that!”

He leaps up and lunges across the beach towards her to the sound of Caduceus laughing.

\---

Rheada doesn’t have magic, but Caduceus teaches her everything short of that, including how to make healing potions. Fjord is surprised when he walks in—once upon a time the sight was familiar, but they hardly need them anymore, have so many stocked up that even when Caduceus gives them out to patients they never worry about running out.

But of course Rheada may need her own someday, and Fjord takes a lot of joy in watching Caduceus slow the familiar movements, show her what to add and how to stir and check the heat.

Rheada seems strangely amazed, watching how the liquid changes, recognizing the magic in this in ways that the usual things—the stitches and the wound-cleaning and the symptoms of flu—do not seem to reflect so well.

It turns deep red, like cherries, and Caduceus smiles. “Good job,” he tells her.

“You’re a good teacher,” Rheada says, abruptly, and then stands up and darts outside, as though embarrassed.

Caduceus smiles, a half-uncertain hopeful version of his typical expression, like an uncertain reach for what he anticipates will be joy, if it’s real. “Am I?” he asks Fjord.

“I could have told you that,” Fjord says. “Yes. A good one to me and to her. The Wildmother,” he elaborates, when he catches confusion in Caduceus’ look. “You taught me about her.”

“Oh,” he says. “That’s different. Faith is different. Faith is easy to explain. This is...Caleb is a good teacher,” he adds, as though this is an explanation. He measures the potion into three bottles, pouring slowly to not spill a drop.

“I’ve heard that,” Fjord says hesitantly, because the wizard is certainly beloved as a professor although Fjord hasn’t exactly studied magic with him. He isn’t sure what Caduceus’s angle is, though.

“Caleb is much smarter than I am,” Caduceus says, bluntly. He sets the empty pot down and begins stoppering the bottles.

“I think that can make you a worse teacher,” Fjord says. “If things come easy to you it can be hard to explain to others, especially if they’re struggling. If they don’t, you know what it’s like to try to figure it out and can help them more. Not that you’re not smart,” Fjord tacks on hastily. “Just that—“

“I know what you meant,” Caduceus interjects gently. “Thank you, Fjord. And thank you, Rheada. That was kind of you to say.”

Fjord turns; Rheada is in the doorway. Caduceus’ preternatural hearing must have alerted him to her approach, although Fjord hadn’t noticed.

“I mean it,” she says, stepping the rest of the way inside. She sets down the water pail, although Fjord suspects she only fetched it as an excuse to duck out for a moment.

“It’s still kind of you to say,” Caduceus says, turning to face her. “I would like to thank you too, actually. Thank you for coming here and for insisting. I’ve never taught anyone healing before, and I was afraid to do it wrong. But I know this was the right thing to do, now, and I’m glad you pushed me towards that path and grateful you’re here.”

Rheada looks a little dumbstruck. Fjord can relate. The full force of Caduceus’ utter sincerity is overwhelming.

“I’m—thanks,” she says. “Yes. Me too.”

He holds out a bottle to her. “Here.”

“I don’t—mine?”

“You made it.”

“It’s real?”

“Yes,” Caduceus says. “They came out well. You did great.”

“I’m a healer,” she says, in an odd tone. “This could save someone’s life.”

“You will,” Caduceus says, with the sort of conviction that leaves no room for anyone hearing it to hold their own doubt.

\---

It never quite leaves Caduceus, that he will lose Cormorant someday—Fjord sees flashes of it when he watches him watching her, sometimes. There is a terrible sadness that he carries, and Fjord only guesses now that he can see it when Caduceus watches the back of Cormorant that he might have it for Fjord, too. But that sadness, however it lives, he is good at hiding. He has not learned this one yet.

Even so, they don’t talk about it, not until the day at the wharf. Rheada is running errands, trying to prove herself useful, which she is as she’s better with her coppers and silvers than Fjord’s husband has ever been. Cory is leading Fjord around with an iron-grip on his pant leg, tugging him about like an oversized dog. It’s sheer luck that Caduceus is already down on the docks--it’s because one of the fisherwomen, Eleanor, shouts down the pier to him, and he comes to have a look at the stitches he put in her arm where a broken lobster basket sliced through it three weeks ago.

That’s when the shouting starts. There’s commotion, sometimes, and Fjord is far enough down into the market—past not only the boats but the fish stalls, standing by while Cormorant pokes eagerly at the iron wares before the tolerant blacksmith. And then the shouting turns to screaming turns to someone shouting for Fjord, specifically. He has to find Rheada and shove Cory firmly into her arms so she won’t follow, and then figure out what the hell is going on, which is that Caduceus is in the water.

Fjord has it on good authority that Caduceus rarely actually fancies a swim, and certainly not the way he’s done it now, which seems to involve being under the dock. Fjord leans over and swings a hand down, and Caduceus splashes and says, “Water breathing, on the both of us—“ and then Fjord sees the child.

He casts the spell in a panicked haze. He’s seen her before—Sedona, the half-elf, Caduceus delivered her perhaps two summers ago. She slipped off the pier, someone says, and the undertow swept her beneath the wood, and then she was caught beneath it. There are several men on the dock, soaked through, and Fjord guesses they’d tried to pull her free before resorting to sending a healer down there, to—what? Try to keep her alive? Caduceus has some ability to control water, Fjord knows, but he probably didn’t even ask for the spells today. Why would he? Long gone are the days when he might need a wave to shatter the hull of a pirate ship, or to try and slow a dragon turtle in their path.

“They can breathe,” Fjord says, and gets out of the way of the man who has come back with a hatchet and dives in, too, hacking at the wood she has become wedged in to free them.

Caduceus hands her up to him, arms shaking. Sedona is tiny and drenched, ears poking through her soaked mass of hair, and her father is clutching at her and she is sobbing but breathing, her heart beating, alive and whole if badly frightened. Fjord hauls Caduceus up after, with Anders’ help, and that of another man he doesn’t know. Caduceus is shaking. The whole thing is a blur but Sedona is—fine, she’s fine, she’s alive, there is a red wool blanket around her, someone with a house nearby has brought a towel for Caduceus.

Fine. Everyone’s fine, and safe, and none the worse except for some seawater. He tries to calm his breathing, slow his heart rate. It works to an extent.

“Melora,” Fjord murmurs, when everyone has broken apart. He only relaxes the rest of the way when he spots Rheada, arms stubbornly tight around the middle of Cory, who is squirming. “That had to be close. Good job, keeping her head above water.”

“I didn’t,” Caduceus says. “I didn’t—have the spells.”

“You—what?” Rheada lets Cory go when they reach them, and Caduceus accepts the hug she gives even though he’s soaked through. He does slip something into Fjord’s palm, surreptitiously, before hauling her up over his shoulder.

The way he does it compels Fjord to feel the object with his thumb inside his closed fist instead of in the light. It’s a ring—it’s Caduceus’ ring—and he traces the familiar shape and then freezes, when the angled silver of the setting pricks his finger, as it slips into the space where the diamond used to sit.

“Gods,” Fjord says. “Did you—“

“I don’t know if it was the right thing,” Caduceus says, shifting Cory downward—she’s giggling—so he can speak without being directly in her ear. “It was dark and it felt like—holding Cory—and I—”

“She’s a baby,” Fjord says. “It was the right thing.”

“I didn’t ask—“

“You don’t need to ask,” Fjord says, sharply, too sharply, and then softens his tone. “You don’t need to ask. You know Her. You know it’s the right thing.”

Caduceus releases a shuddering breath. Nods. Swings Cory up to ear level again. “We’re both going to need a bath,” he informs her.

“I don’t need a bath!”

“You hugged me and I was all covered in ocean goo, so now you have it too,” Caduceus says.

“Ocean goo,” she repeats, and giggles. Fjord’s thumb worries at the empty setting in the ring and tries to focus on her laughter and nothing else.

“I’m going to lose her,” Caduceus says in bed that night. “Her, and you, and—I  _ understand _ , but I—”

“You can be sad,” Fjord says. “Or angry. You can understand something and that doesn’t make it  _ easier _ , Caduceus. It doesn’t make it  _ okay _ .”

“It’s a natural thing,” Caduceus says.

“So are—volcanos. So are storms. And poisonous plants,” Fjord says. “Just because She watches over it, Caduceus, you don’t have to love it.”

“I think I’m angry,” Caduceus admits. “I think—even if I’d thought She wouldn’t like it—I would have tried to bring Sedona back.”

“I think She understands,” Fjord says. “You said—it’s natural. It’s natural for a father to want his children to outlive him.”

“Melora willing,” Caduceus says, quietly.

“Melora willing, she won’t,” Fjord says. “Melora willing, you’ll both die old and grey and surrounded by so many grandchildren you can’t name them all. And she’ll have lived such a full life you won’t wish to bring her back.”

“When did you get wise?” Caduceus asks, half-joking.

“I was wise before,” Fjord says, and then amends. “Well, maybe not. Wise enough to marry you, I guess.”

Caduceus smiles at him. In this bed is the most gratitude Fjord has ever felt for his orcish heritage, that it lets him better see Caduceus’ expressions in the darkness, and the image stays with him when his eyes close and he sleeps better for it.

\---

Eventually, Rheada leaves. She’s gone from teenager to young woman which is almost as much of a shock as the way that little Cormorant has gone from baby to young girl, and she no longer darts back to Caduceus to check everything she does, and half the time the village lets her take care of things without running to fetch her mentor. She and Caduceus talk around it for a couple of months beforehand—that she’s out of things to learn, that she’s a grown woman, that she can always come back if she needs help.

For her part, Rheada fluctuates between resolve and terror—pride that she’s done what she came to do and that Saulterwauld won’t be sending anyone who needs help on a desperate journey, worry that she’s not ready to do it alone.

“We’re not far,” Caduceus says, even though she does not say the latter in so many words. “You won’t be alone.”

“I know,” she says, and hugs them both too tightly.

The house feels empty for a while once she’s gone, but nothing can feel too empty with Cormorant tearing in and out of it, and they have visitors—Veth and Yeza and Luc, frequently, and Jester, and still Essek but sometimes with Caleb which Fjord has taken as definitive proof that their relationship is ‘on’. They get letters more than visits from Beau, as her Expositor duties seem to be taking her all around the continent. From Yasha they will get long periods of silence and then suddenly she’ll arrive in Bluecove and spend the whole season with them, wandering the village, sitting out on the cliff and pointing out all the different stars to Cormorant, flipping through her book of flowers and telling her all the names.

Caduceus is called out more nights than he was when Rheada was there, and even though it’s technically easier since Cory can feed and bathe and entertain herself, she’s also more willing to be vocal about the ways in which she does not want to share her father with the village. Fjord grins at the way she sulks in the doorway when one of Caduceus’ patient’s wives comes to tell him their baby is on the way. She lurks in the corner scowling until he turns around to bid her farewell.

“Be good,” he says, seriously, kneeling to kiss her on the forehead.

She pouts. “Will you come kiss me goodnight?”

“I won’t be home yet. But I will when I get home.”

“Then,” Cory says, slyly, “Maybe I won’t be good. You won’t know.”

“The Wildmother will tell me.” He pauses at the counter to twist his long hair and pin it up out of the way.

“She will not!” But she sneaks a glance at Fjord, as though she isn’t really sure. He shrugs at her; he has an excellent poker face. Cory turns back. “…will she really?”

“She tells me everything,” Caduceus says, with a slight smile. “So be good.”

“ _ Fiiiiine. _ ” Long and drawn out, as though it is a terrible inconvenience. “Even though you’re  _ leaving _ .”

“And then I’m coming back. Such is life. The tide will go and come back. The spring will go and come back. And I will go and come back. And if this baby isn’t too long in coming I might even make it back before the sun does.” He is gathering herbs now, checking labels on jars, rolling them up neatly into the bag.

“Are you going to race it?” Cory demanded.

“No.”

“Why not? I want you to.”

“It’s much faster than I am and going much further. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“To who?”

“To the baby, who would not like to be born while I argue with you,” he answers, closing the satchel and slinging it over his shoulder. “I’ll be home soon.” He’s taking a step from the counter when Fjord moves to meet him, and they kiss, an easy and automatic thing. But there’s nothing perfunctory about it; Caduceus’ arms slip around Fjord’s neck and Fjord’s hand tightens on his upper arm and although they break apart after only a moment there’s a fragment of time when it seems as though they won’t let go at all.

But of course they do, and the only reason Fjord isn’t troubled by it in the slightest is because Caduceus will be home, because this is their place, because they have had years and will have many more years and Fjord can never mind it when Caduceus is out helping others, even when it means feeding dinner to a sulky Cory and reading to her and tucking her in for the evening by himself, and lying in bed waiting until he hears Caduceus’ footsteps and the door of the bedroom and the familiar pattern of him getting ready for bed.

Fjord sits up and Caduceus hears the rustle of sheets.

“You get her to bed okay?”

“I thought the Wildmother was going to tell you all about that,” Fjord teases.

Caduceus pauses to yawn before he returns the teasing smile. “The Wildmother lives beyond the Divine Gate and makes her will known through her followers. Why trouble her when her paladin is already here, doing her work?”

“In that case,” Fjord laughs, “On behalf of the Wildmother, I can tell you she was very good. We read Jester’s Blink Dog book again. Which I’m sure you’ll mention to her in the morning so she remembers you can read minds.”

“It’ll be so much less fun when she gets old enough to realize that her fathers might talk to each other when she’s not in the room,” Caduceus muses, laying down.

Fjord falls back against the pillows as well, frowning. “Or to find all the dicks Jessie painted in that book.”

“Something to look forward to when she’s older,” Caduceus assures him.

“Much older, I hope,” Fjord murmurs, and if he adds that to his next prayer to Melora, well, that’s between them.

\---

Fjord dreams that Caduceus is drowning. It’s a strange blur of memory, because he’s seen Caduceus sinking in the water before, trying not to choke on a mouthful of sea, shivering on the deck afterwards—but this is not the Caduceus he knew then, strange and young and naïve. No one could accuse Caduceus of being naïve anymore, and although Fjord thinks there will always be something of the otherworldly about him, something fae and divine, it does not feel strange anymore. It feels beautiful and familiar. He is still young, of course—will be young when Fjord is dead and in the ground, he thinks ruefully, but not young in the way he was then.

And this Caduceus who drowns is not strange and young and naïve. His hair is streaked white, tangling about his face as he struggles in the water. The scars, multitudinous and old, spiderwebbing across his arms where the soaked fabric falls back, are the same ones that Fjord can feel slightly raised above the rest of the skin when he holds Caduceus at night. He is not wearing his green beetle armor, just the green tunic over a linen shirt, the brown coat mottled with embroidered leaves that Fjord had bought him the winter before billowing behind him. The hand that claws upward wears the ring Fjord gave him as he chokes and sinks deeper.

Fjord shouts, but no sound carries—he reaches for him, but it is as though he is looking at a painting that he can’t reach into, and Caduceus drowns, and drowns, and drowns, and Fjord swims through nothing and gets no closer. Caduceus breathes water, eventually, and Fjord watches in helpless horror as it fills his lungs, as his eyes slip shut, and he wakes gasping as though he were the one drowning.

He sits bolt upright, and the room is still and dark around him, and Caduceus, breathing steadily, stirs only because Fjord has moved.

“Alright?” Caduceus says, blearily, still mostly asleep.

“Fine,” Fjord says, and watches him sink back into sleep, peacefully, not at all like plunging into the water.

_ I think this one just means you’re afraid,  _ Caduceus says some five years past, and Fjord wonders if part of him always will be.

He’s okay with that, he thinks. If the cost of having something as precious and beautiful as this is always being a fraction afraid that you will lose it, it is the cheapest price he has ever paid.

\---

On what Fjord eventually comes to think of as the Last Day, he takes Cormorant down to the shore. Caduceus is settling down to garden when they leave and mentions plans to bake later; he makes mushroom and moss sandwiches and packages them up for Fjord while Fjord does the breakfast dishes. He and Cory are going to dig for clams; she is impatient, clutching a little spade and a bucket. Partly because Cory is so little-kid overdramatically annoyed about it and partly because his breath still catches a little when Caduceus looks up at him from the vegetables backlit by the rising sun, Fjord stops on the way out the gate and kisses him deeply. It’s strange to have to bend down to kiss him when he’s used to tilting his head up.

It’s a clear day, although Fjord can see heavy storm clouds gathering to the north. It will drift south towards them soon, if Caduceus’ faint limp is any indication, but not yet.

They find a lot of clams, filling Cory’s little bucket and then Fjord’s larger one. She gets spectacularly dirty, in a way he thought she might have outgrown at seven, but she only seems to relish it more with the understanding of what it means. He dunks her in the sea to wash it off and she shrieks with laughter. The afternoon is perfect and golden. Fjord has the thought, _ I am happy _ , and that thought folds oddly clear into his memory, with the mud and the clams and the storm clouds and kissing Caduceus in the garden.

The house is empty when Fjord and Cormorant return. This does not particularly trouble Fjord, although it is going into the evening. Caduceus’ coat, staff, and medicine bag are absent. He has left no note, but he usually does not; Fjord assumes he has been called away by some medical need. The bread, baked earlier, is on the tray on top of the stove unsliced. Fjord opens the icebox—the ice block itself enchanted to never melt, a gift from Essek—and finds that Caduceus has already cleaned and dressed the salmon with citrus and rosemary, and it’s all ready to put in the oven. Fjord does this, and slices the bread, and Cory recounts most of their mutual adventure at the shore back to him even though he also experienced it. He reads to her the next chapter of the novel Caleb sent without lighting a candle; his orcish darkvision is good enough.

As he reads, the storm drifts south. The rain is coming down by the time he goes to bed, and he is woken in the night repeatedly by sharp bursts of lightning through the window. He is vaguely annoyed at his disturbed sleep; he had thought he had ceased to be unsettled by storms, but it still brings back odd memories without Caduceus beside him.

He will sleep better tomorrow, he thinks, when the storm has passed and Caduceus has returned, and it is oddly that thought that lulls him to sleep. He doesn’t, of course, but that is the beauty of every moment of the Last Day—he doesn’t know it yet. He is still the dreamer slipping into the beginnings of the nightmare, not yet unnerved, expecting to rest untroubled, anticipating the certainty of the coming dawn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A further note on tags and warnings: This fic is marked "Choose Not to Use Archive Warnings." It contains no themes or topics that I expect to be concerning that are not included or alluded to by the other tags, but feel free to ask me if you're worried about anything specific.
> 
> This fic was four months in the making and it would mean the world if you could leave a comment.
> 
> I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr or [@chromecatalists](https://twitter.com/chromecatalists/) on Twitter. Come say hi!


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fjord tries, very hard, to remember the way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Huge, undying thanks to jelly for beta reading! Thanks continue to be owed to [Star](https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardreamertwo) for this fic's existence and her willingness to read random snippets as I write them. She also wrote [a song for this fic, which if you haven't heard yet, you should listen to here.](https://soundcloud.com/user-460002969/sailors-prayer)

Even the next morning, the worry comes on slow. Rain is sluicing down the window pane when Fjord wakes, the heaviest rain of the year so far. He reaches across the bed automatically, but the sheets are cold. Fjord is disappointed, but not afraid. Perhaps Caduceus’ work took all night. Perhaps he simply didn’t want to walk home at night, in the storm. 

Fjord gets up and makes breakfast, omelets with melted cheese and sliced sweet peppers. He and Cormorant eat together, and then she picks aimlessly at an arithmetic exercise from one of Caleb’s gifted books while Fjord does the dishes. As the morning slips into afternoon, the rain slows and stops, and the greyish blur of the sky gives way to a little sun.

Any moment now, Fjord thinks absently, and then it begins to grow late, the sun starting to slide back towards the horizon, and it is only then that Fjord begins to think something might be wrong.

Unfortunately, Fjord can’t cast Sending and get an answer in moments. Fortunately, a tight-knit village is reliably in everyone else’s business, and all Fjord has to do is walk down to the market, winding down after a slow wet day, and ask around about Caduceus.

But when Fjord asks, Sildar shakes his head. “Haven’t heard anything today. Try Mel.”

Mel doesn’t know either. Neither does Olivia, who frowns deeply. “Let’s ask Rowena.” Rowena is an incurable gossip and her house sits at the far end of Bluecove, where the little roadway bends up the coast towards the squat little nameless villages that dot the forest along the little nameless rivers that run through the wood to the sea.

“A little girl came through from one of the settlements North,” Rowena says. She has tight-curled white hair and has a grandmotherly look to her. “Said her mother was sick with a fever. Clay didn’t think he’d be gone long but I haven’t seen him back.” She gives him a very sharp look. “Bad rain. Maybe he stayed the night.”

“Maybe,” Fjord says, although something is churning deep in his gut. “Thank you.” Maybe Caduceus stayed the night. But why didn’t he send a message? Maybe she’d been very ill, and he hadn’t been able to sleep, and so he couldn’t get his spells back. But he wouldn’t be able to manage two sleepless nights in a row, and he’d also know being gone so long that Fjord would be very worried, and so he would surely wake to Caduceus’ voice in his head in the morning if he didn’t wake up beside him.

Still, it feels wrong, and were it not for Cormorant waiting at home and the sky starting to grow dark, Fjord would have gone to look that night. Later, he will hate himself for waiting, even though it wouldn’t have made a scrap of difference.

But that night, he doesn’t hate himself. Not yet. He just worries, and walks home, and he and Cory fry fish together and eat at the table with one empty chair, and then play cards by candlelight, and when Fjord puts her to bed he waits too long in the front room and then lights the lantern on a whim and sets it in the window.

He imagines Caduceus coming home in the dark, staff lit so he doesn’t trip, looking up and seeing the light gleaming on the cliff. Imagines him following it home, like the ships off the coast of Nicodranas steering towards the Mother’s Lighthouse in the night. 

Imagining it helps him sleep that night, and although it never works again, he still imagines it many times after.

\---

It is the next morning that Fjord knows for sure: something is wrong. Caduceus is still gone, and there is no message in his head apologizing for being gone so long, and telling Fjord he’ll be home soon, and asking how Cory and the garden and Fjord are doing without him. The sky is very red again, and Fjord feels that old sailor’s apprehension rising within him even though he’s not setting sail.

He has the edge of a bad dream lingering in his head when he wakes, and even though he can’t remember it, the unsettled feeling remains.

He makes breakfast very quietly, sliced melon and pancakes, which are a whole affair but are one of the very few things Fjord has learned to make without a recipe. Cormorant slinks into the kitchen when he’s plating them up, her dark hair a fluffed-up cloud of tangles, and regards him with dark circles under her eyes.

Fjord knows immediately that she slept as poorly as he did. Perhaps she doesn’t have the same grasp of all the things that this could mean, but Caduceus’ absence has gravity that Cormorant can surely feel as well. She takes her plate sleepily and slathers the pancakes in molasses.

“I’m going to take you down to spend today with Cara,” Fjord tells her. They have a standing invitation for a babysitter; Cormorant is only about a year younger than the baby Caduceus delivered that first month in Bluecove and well-behaved, mostly.

“Where are you going? Are you going to see Aunt Veth?” she asks through a mouthful of food.

“Maybe soon,” Fjord says, because it isn’t a bad idea. Normally Caduceus uses a Sending spell when they want to talk to the Nein, but Caduceus isn’t here, and Melora forbid, if he isn’t tomorrow, he’ll have better luck sending a message from Nicodranas than from little Bluecove. “I’m heading up north today. Your dad went up there to help a sick woman.”

“Is she still not better?” She says it innocently, but she’s not guileless. Fjord knows she’s fishing for answers.

“I don’t know,” Fjord admits. He doesn’t have the answers to give her, and they fall into silence except for forks scraping against plates.

“Did something happen to Dad?” she whispers. Strangely, it is the hush of her tone that almost breaks him; as though if she says it quietly enough, no gods will hear it and make it come true.

“I think so,” Fjord whispers back. She nods solemnly, but tears spill over seconds after and she throws herself across the table at him. He hauls her into his lap and folds her into his arms immediately, letting her cry against his chest. His own tears are slow to come, many years of forcing them back a habit too hard to break, but as he sits there holding his daughter in the echo of the question and the answer, they come eventually.

Fjord—abandoned, cast-aside-like-a-stone Fjord—considers the possibility that Caduceus has simply left. Fjord is the sort of person who is left, after all. But Cory—beautiful, perfect little Cory—is not. And even the consideration of it feels like a betrayal, because the sort of person that Fjord is and the sort of person that Cormorant is entirely aside, Caduceus is not the sort of person to leave.

Caduceus had stayed behind a decade in a crumbling garden, utterly alone, because it was his duty. Caduceus is the sort to swear oaths and never break them, not when it becomes inconvenient, not when he will have to die to hold on. And he had sworn himself to Fjord with as much fervor and certainty and love as he had sworn himself to the Wildmother, and he may have made no formal promises to Cory but Fjord knows that Caduceus will keep them just the same.

If Caduceus had left them, he had not left willingly. Fjord knows that, and somehow that hurts worse than the idea he has been abandoned—being left would have hurt him badly, but the alternative means a worse kind of wound.

“Is he going to come back?” Cory asks, after her sobs have dissolved into sniffling.

“I don’t know,” Fjord says, rubbing her back. “But I’m going to try to find him, okay? And I know he’ll do everything in the world to come back to us.”

The truth of that statement stings as it leaves his mouth. Caduceus is surely doing—or had done—everything he could to return, and it had not been enough, because he is still gone.

\---

Fjord borrows Sildar’s old horse. It is, without a doubt, the oldest horse Fjord has ever ridden—she was an old mare seven years ago and has only gotten older since—but she’s solid. Solid enough to bear Fjord’s weight, if not Caduceus’. That doesn’t matter; he only needs the horse out of expediency. He and Caduceus can walk back—send a message to Cory so she knows all is well and make their way slowly down the road.

“Ride safe,” Sildar tells him. “Rain might’ve washed out some roads.”

“I’ll be careful,” Fjord promises. And he is. The horse doesn’t shy, and the sky is clear now, so there’s no thunder and lightning to test her patience. The road is muddy but they step careful in the curves. In the bright clear morning, it’s hard to feel as unsettled as he had the night before. What could have gone wrong, along these roads?

There is no way to get lost—only one road. One of the settlements, Rowena had said. As they walk, Fjord is already making plans—Caduceus will tell him where he’s going, just in case, from now on. So that Fjord doesn’t have to do guesswork, or wonder when to start worrying. He can use Sending or leave a note or simply tell someone before he leaves town. It’s only luck Rowena saw him.

As Fjord makes these plans, his annoyance is growing a little. Why didn’t Caduceus leave a note? Why didn’t he call? But he knows, he knows that the second he lays eyes on him all that frustration will be gone. Really there’s nothing to be frustrated about. It’s all because Fjord is afraid, because Caduceus’s absence is sitting too heavy in the pit of his stomach for him to think clearly.

Around noon, he passes a rider and hails him. The man slows.

“Hello,” Fjord calls, pulling the old mare to a stop. “Have you happened to see a firbolg?”

“A what?” The man rides a chestnut gelding. He is young—more of a boy than a man, now that Fjord gets a close look—and wears the livery of some minor noble house. A messenger, riding to Nicodranas, most likely.

“A firbolg,” Fjord repeats, and then realizes it wasn’t a matter of not hearing. “Giantkin, a—man with grey skin and pink hair. Elves’ ears, sort of.”

The boy shakes his head. “I’ve seen no one of that description.”

“And the villages along here?”

“One just beyond the river,” the boy says. He’s eager to be of assistance, for some reason. “Three more hours’ ride, in this wet. Another one deeper in the woods.”

“Thank you,” Fjord says.

“There some kind of trouble?” the youth asks. Fjord blinks at him and then glances down at himself. He has, unconsciously, dressed in some of his old traveling clothes—black leather, red-lined cloak, the symbol of the Wildmother that he pins to his coat every day looking like a banner.

“No,” Fjord says.

“He’s not a—highwayman or something?” the boy asks, hopefully. “You’re a paladin, aren’t you?”

No one has called Fjord a paladin in a long time. “He’s a cleric,” Fjord answers, truthfully. “He was due back by now. I don’t think there’s trouble, I’m just…being sure.”

“Right,” the boy says, enthusiasm barely dimmed. “Do you have a sword?”

“Yes,” Fjord says.

“Where is it?”

“Are you planning to do something that makes me want a blade?” Fjord asks, pointedly, hiding his amusement.

“N-no, sir!” the boy backs off quickly. “It’s just that—I thought it would be cool to see…”

Fjord holds his stare for a fraction of a second longer and then relents. “It’s pretty cool,” he agrees, and calls the Star Razor to his hand.

He’s rewarded with a sincere gasp. “That’s amazing.”

“The Wildmother is,” Fjord says, wondering if he sounds silly but then thinking that Caduceus never does, when he says things like this. And the boy is still wide-eyed. “Keep an eye out, will you?”

“Yes, sir!” the boy awkwardly salutes him and nudges his horse into a bouncy trot. Fjord shakes his head, vanishes the sword and rides on.

The encounter improves his mood, though, which explains why he is so blindsided when he reaches the river. He can hear the water flowing well before it comes into view, and he has to tug at the reins to stall the mare once it does. The heavy rain from the day before has caused the river to swell; the usual banks are overflowed and the land at the new water’s edge is sodden and unstable.

“Hold on there!” a man shouts to him from the far bank. “We’ve got a ferry a little further up.”

Confused, Fjord allows himself to be guided by shouting from the far bank further upriver, through the trees. Sure enough, the horse is able to pick its way up a few rocky embankments and the river is a little calmer further up it. A man poles a boat over to him; he’s a half-orc too, and they sort of grin understandingly at each other.

“Bridge washed out,” the ferryman tells him in the wake of their brief moment of camaraderie. The boat isn’t big enough for horses; the man lends Fjord some rope and he ties up the mare to a steady looking tree. “Not seen anything like it. Storm was bad, but hadn’t realized it was that bad until,” he waved a hand. “Whoosh, gone.”

“When did it happen?” Fjord asks. “Would it have kept someone here?”

“Evening before last,” he says. “We got the ferry going this afternoon, when the river slowed a little. Why?”

“I’m looking for a healer,” Fjord explains, as he gets on the boat. “Who rode up this way, two afternoons ago. A woman was—sick, I think, but I don’t know the details. A girl came to get him. From Bluecove.”

The man frowns. “Something happened with Deanna’s girl, yesterday. I’ll take you down to her. Don’t know the details.”

“Right,” Fjord says. “And you haven’t seen a healer, here? A firbolg. Giantkin,” he adds, starting to explain.

“I know what a firbolg is,” the man says. “Never seen one in these parts. You’re sure?”

“That he came this way?”

“That he’s a firbolg,” the half-orc says. He draws the pole steadily, working their way across the river. “They come from the north, I think.”

“Yes,” Fjord says, amused despite himself. “I married him, you see.”

“Oh!” The man laughs. “I guess you would know, then.”

He ties off the boat expertly and leaves the pole on the bank. “No one else’d dare take it today,” he offers as an explanation, even though Fjord doesn’t ask. “Not that I don’t trust my neighbors, mind you. But it would take an expert punter to make it across with this current.”

“It seems dangerous,” Fjord agrees.

“Haven’t had a flood like this in years. Bad timing, if Deanna was sick. Might have been her mother, if she sent Nadia—that’s her little girl. Here we are.” The village is much smaller than Bluecove, and poorer, Fjord thinks. Bluecove is a port, if a little one. There’s better access to the big cities, better trade. A bridge washing out can ruin a little river village like this one. “Deanna!”

A human woman with dark curls emerges. “Raden, hello. Who is this?”

“I’m Fjord,” Fjord introduces himself. “My husband is a healer. I think he was called up this way the afternoon before last. Raden thought you might know something? That your little girl might know something…”

The woman, strangely, goes pale. “Nadia!” she calls. “Come here!”

A dark-haired girl emerges. She’s older than Cory; eleven or twelve, Fjord guesses. “Hello,” she says, uncertainly. Her fingers bunch in her skirt.

“Nadia,” she says. “You have to tell me now. What happened yesterday?”

She shakes her head. “Nothing,” she says. “Nothing—happened…”

She’s terrified, Fjord realizes. He drops to one knee to put them at eye level, ignoring that the ground is still wet and staining his pants. “Hello,” Fjord says. “Were you in Bluecove before the storm, Miss Nadia?”

She nods.

“I’m here looking for the man who came back with you,” Fjord says. Strangely, even as he says it, the logical conclusion to the conversation hasn’t hit him yet. He is merely doing two things he is used to—the older thing, getting people to like him and tell him what he needs to know, and the newer thing, talking to children. “You came for a healer, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she whispers. “They said—it was important…”

“Is he still here?”

Nadia doesn’t answer.

“She didn’t come back with anyone,” Deanna says. “She came back dripping wet and sobbing.” She shoots Fjord an accusatory look, like that’s somehow his fault. “She was very sick yesterday.”

“Did something happen?” Fjord asks.

She nods, stiffly.

“What happened?” Fjord asks, a little too sharply. Nadia recoils.

Raden steps in, thankfully. “Nadia,” he says. “Did you take the bridge yesterday?”

Nadia nods, and the bottom drops out of Fjord’s stomach. He can’t form words. Raden is still talking, but the voices come from far away. “What happened?”

“Bridge was broken,” she says, quietly, and then steals a look at Fjord and instantly bursts into tears.

“It’s alright,” Deanna tries to soothe, but Nadia pushes her away and sobs. “I’m sorry,” she hiccups. “He saved me. I’m sorry. It’s my fault. I shouldn’t’ve…”

“That’s alright,” her mother draws her away. “It’s not your fault. Come on.”

Raden is looking at Fjord. Fjord is feeling very numb. “Alright,” Raden says. “If she’d said sooner, a search would do more good, but at this point you’d need magic to do most anything.”

Magic. Air floods back into Fjord’s lungs. Magic he has, because there is the Mighty Nein. Caleb can scry, and so can Jester. Veth has—something, he’s sure, and Beau is a good investigator—

“I’m—going to call some people,” Fjord says. “Who will help us find him.”

“The river goes to the sea from here,” Raden says. “The rapids are—Mr. Fjord.”

That name hurts, both because it was Caduceus’ name for him and because no one calls him it anymore. “Clay,” he says. “Mr. Clay. Or just Fjord.”

“Fjord,” Raden says, because maybe he has sense enough to notice how Fjord can’t get ‘Clay’ all the way out without a half-sob. “I don’t want to overstep…”

“He swims okay,” Fjord says, more to himself than anyone. “He swims—I taught him how to swim. I need to get back across the river.”

Raden takes him back without a question. Fjord rides the old mare as hard as she can manage, back down south, straight past Bluecove to Nicodranas and Veth to call the Mighty Nein to him.

Fjord has friends. Fjord has friends, and magic, and the Wildmother, and he is scared to death but he will not lose faith.

Not yet.

\---

It takes less time than Fjord supposes to gather them all there, in the little house on the top of the cliff. The ride to Nicodranas takes the longest, although it goes by in a blur. Sweat is dripping down his face in the sun as he bangs on the door to the alchemist’s shop where Veth spends most of her days.

A halfling woman who isn’t Veth answers. “Looking for Veth Brenatto,” he says.

“Do you have an appointment?” the woman asks, professionally.

“No,” Fjord says. “I’m her friend. It’s an emergency.”

“Right,” she says. “I can take your information. We can contact a healer if there’s a negative reaction to a chemical, although used appropriately—“

“Not an alchemical emergency,” Fjord says. “A personal emergency. Go get Veth. Please.” He draws himself up to his full height and looms a bit, just for additional effect.

She squeaks. “Getting Mrs. Brenatto.”

She does, quite quickly. “You scared the shit out of my poor assistant,” Veth’s voice carries out before she makes it to the doorway. “So I assume someone is dying or something.” Her hair is braided as usual, and the braids themselves are tied together in the back to keep them from falling into her chemicals.

“Caduceus is missing,” Fjord says. The words feel sharp in his mouth.

“He’s seven feet tall,” Veth quips. “How do you lose him?”

“Missing,” Fjord repeats, harshly. “In—he was helping a village to the north and there was a flood. I need—Caleb or Jester, someone who can scry.”

“Right, then,” the amusement vanishes entirely from Veth’s expression when she registers Fjord’s fear. “Here, come have some water. How did you get here?”

“Horse,” Fjord says. “Actually, do you have—water, or something. For the horse.”

“Ursa!” she calls the halfling woman back and sends her out to take care of Sildar’s poor mare. Fjord didn’t even think to check what state it was in, which probably makes him a terrible person, except that the fear is still hot and real and close under his skin.

“Alright,” she says. “Let’s call Caleb.” She has an enchanted Sending stone that she picks up and taps. Caleb has its twin. When Caleb had settled more permanently in Rosohna and Veth in Nicodranas, Caleb had created them. Fjord has made use of them on occasion—to announce their new address, to inform everyone of Cormorant’s arrival into the world—but this is the first time he has used them to call for help.

“Caleb,” Veth says. “Caduceus is missing and Fjord needs help.”

“A Scrying spell,” Fjord puts in. “If you can scry on him.”

“Ja, okay,” Caleb says. His voice is familiar and comforting. Caleb will be able to help. “I am coming. I am getting everyone and then I am coming.”

“You don’t—“ Fjord almost tells him not to bother, don’t get everyone, but he wants everyone. He wants his friends. He wants every resource he can pull together here with him, doing everything they can.

Caleb works fast. He gets Essek involved, and in ten minutes they’re all standing in Veth’s house, and Veth has run home and come back with a bag full of things—the one constant in Veth’s life is that she seems to endlessly make and collect things and replace them with more things once she gives them away—and also her husband and son. Luc is a teenager now. Fjord isn’t sure what to do with that.

“He’ll be fine,” Jester says. “Caduceus is like, a really good swimmer. I bet he just didn’t ask the Wildmother for a Sending spell. He never takes Sending. And probably it’s really easy to get lost.”

“We could scry here,” Caleb says. “Or we could go back to your house and scry from there. It is very familiar to him, which might make it better.”

“Let’s—yeah. Home,” Fjord says. “That sounds good.”

So Essek teleports them to the cottage. He leaves shortly thereafter—Fjord gathers, although Essek does not say anything about it, that Caleb had pulled him away from something important to do this, and the fact that Essek does not mention it at all makes Fjord even fonder of him than he was already.

“If you need to travel, Caleb knows how to reach me,” Essek says, and then he teleports himself out of the garden.

“Can you go get Cormorant?” Fjord asks Yasha. “She’s in the village with Cara, if you remember where she is.”

“I remember,” Yasha says. Fjord picks Yasha because she thinks Cara might remember her from the months Yasha spent with them one summer, and because she can move fast. Caleb sets up the spell in their front room. He has brought with him a beautiful, expensive-looking mirror set in silver, which he lays flat on the wooden table. 

“I would like a picture,” Caleb says. “And some of his clothing, and some of his hair, if you have it.”

Fjord has a picture immediately to hand—it’s a drawing Jester did of the two of them when they married, and he had it framed. It’s easy to get from the shelf. The shirt is equally easy to retrieve from the wardrobe. But Caduceus is fairly tidy, and there are no loose strands of hair in his comb.

“It is fine,” Caleb assures him. “It makes it a little easier, but I know him very well and I think he will guess we are looking, so it will be fine without.”

“Without what?” Yasha asks, coming in the door. Cormorant is clinging to her hip, looking worried.

“Dad!” she launches herself down and at Fjord. “Aunt Yasha said you didn’t find Dad so you got everyone. Hi, Aunt Veth, Uncle Yeza, Cousin Luc, Uncle Caleb, Aunt Jester, Aunt Beau.” She runs through the names in a single breath. “What are you doing?”

“I am casting a spell,” Caleb says. “It is called Scrying, and it will help us see your father, wherever he is.”

“Good,” she says, satisfied.

“Without what?” Yasha repeats.

“A bit of—a body part,” Caleb says. “Hair or blood or something.”

“Ooh,” Jester says. “My dad—you know, the Gentleman, he has some of Caduceus’ blood!”

“Is blood better than hair?” Yasha asks.

“Well, we do not have hair,” Caleb says.

“I do,” Yasha says, and produces a braided loop of white-pink hair. “I helped him cut it once and asked if I could keep it.”

It’s weird. It’s extremely weird. But Fjord has never been more endeared to Yasha.

“This will work perfectly,” Caleb says. Yasha starts to hold it out, and then hesitates.

“Will I get it back?”

“Yes,” Caleb says. “All of this, it just helps find him. It is not, ah, consumed by the spell.”

Yasha lets him take the little braid. Caleb takes ten minutes to cast it, and Luc and Cormorant drift over to the side of the room, Luc letting her talk at him. The rest of them keep half an eye on Caleb the whole time.

Finally, he murmurs a word, and taps the mirror, and a golden light spreads across the mirror. Then it fades, and when Fjord leans and looks into it, it is only reflecting Caleb’s face and Fjord’s and the ceiling.

“It didn’t work,” Jester states the obvious. “Why didn’t it work?”

“Something is blocking it,” Caleb says. “Or the spell just failed, sometimes it does that, although it should have worked with all of this.” He waves a hand over the picture and the braid and the shirt. “Or he is not on the same plane as us.”

“What does that mean?” Yasha says. “Do you mean, if he’s dead?”

“If he were dead, the spell would not work,” Caleb answers. “But the spell not working, that does not mean he’s dead.”

“We can go looking!” Jester jumps to her feat. “I can cast—what did he have with him? Did he have his staff?”

“Yes,” Fjord says.

“We’ll go up near there,” Jester says, “And I will cast Locate Object and we can walk until I feel it and then we will find Caduceus! It lasts ten minutes and I can just cast it again until it works.”

“And if it does not work?” Caleb asks, into the silence.

“It will work,” Beau says. “Jester’s awesome. And Cad’s fine. Probably just waiting for you to turn up,” she says to Fjord.

Fjord’s mouth feels very dry. He licks at his tusks, an unconscious habit reviving itself as the anxiety grips him. “Let’s go,” he says. “Can—if someone can stay…”

“We’ll stay,” Yeza says. “Luc and I can stay with her.”

“Are you going to be back to tuck me in?” Cormorant asks. She looks at the window. It’s well into the afternoon.

“We will teleport,” Caleb assures her. “All of us will be back to say goodnight to you, do not worry.”

“And Dad?”

“We will do everything we can to find him,” Caleb says. “That is all I can promise.”

Cormorant says, “Okay,” but then she refuses to let them teleport out without hugging each of them, long and tight, like it might be the last time. She clings longest to Fjord, and when he bends down to hug her she whispers, “Is Dad afraid?”

“Why would he be afraid?” Fjord asks.

“Because I would be afraid if I was alone and lost,” Cormorant says. “So is he?”

“He’s not alone,” Fjord says. “The Wildmother is with him, always. And She’s with you, too.”

“Is She with me when you’re gone?”

“Yes,” Fjord says.

She nods, chewing at her lip. Then she leans back in and whispers, like that will keep it a secret from a goddess, “I like it when you’re with me more, so you have to come back.”

“I’ll come back,” Fjord says, heart aching. She has never forced him to say it before, probably because she never dreamed it was necessary.

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

When he follows the rest of them out into the garden to teleport, they do him the favor of not mentioning the tears running down his face.

\---

The afternoon slips into cool evening as they trek alongside the river. Caleb teleports them to the spot Fjord describes; they arrive at the spot where the bridge was blown out with only minimal difficulty. 

Then they take turns casting Locate Object on Caduceus’ staff by common agreement, since it’s the only object they’re certain he has on him and can picture clearly. Caleb goes first, and his ten minutes give them nothing. Then Fjord goes, holding the image firm in his mind of the wood and the lichen and the purple crystal, the beetles shimmering into view occasionally as they crawled out of the knots and crevices.

But still, nothing. They are going into their third round, the spell held by Jester this time, when her step quickens and her eyes light up.

“I’ve got it I’ve got it I’ve got something!” Jester sings out, hurrying along the riverbank. Fjord follows. After all of the riding and walking, his limbs feel heavy and stiff. Beau comes up alongside him and takes his hand.

“Where?” Caleb is scanning the riverbank. “I don’t see anything.”

“Well it’s a thousand feet from me I think, since I just started sensing it,” Jester says reasonably. “Come on, this direction.”

Fjord follows. Jester is holding her symbol of the Traveler out in front of her, following some invisible pull. They continue along the riverbank—another thousand feet, he supposes, before she slows, looking around.

“Do you see anything?” Jester says. “It should be right around here…”

Fjord would feel better if Caduceus was looking, but of course he isn’t, because they wouldn’t be here if he could be. He scans the riverbank himself, eyes drifting unwillingly to the fast-swirling water, the swollen banks.

“There!” Jester shouts, and points. There is a gleam of purple from a tangle of rushes at the edge of the stream. They all move and all freeze at once, looking at him.

Fjord takes one stiff step, then another. He gets right up to it, onto the muddy ledge where the water swirls past, thick with debris from the storm, and looks at his husband’s staff where it has become caught on something and sheltered from the merciless current.

Fjord drops to his knees. He lifts the staff—it comes free from the riverbank with a soft wet sound, the air bubble it left escaping like a sigh. The earth letting it go. He turns it over in his hand. The wood is soaked through from the river, and the lichen that grows on it is sodden with moisture. Sediment sticks to it along one side, and wet dirt smears the amethyst crystal in the top. Numbly, Fjord wipes at it with his sleeve. It’s unbroken.

“Fjord…” Jester says, soft and fragile. “I can…try something else? I could scry! Or Caleb could scry again!”

Fjord turns the staff over. Water drips down it onto his hands, and he absently licks the drops that try to escape into his sleeve. They taste of salt.

“Fjord?” Jester asks.

Caleb says nothing. He has a horrible blank expression on his face.

“River goes out to the ocean from here,” Fjord says, instead of replying to Jester.

“Yeah,” Beau says, after a pause. “Not too much further.”

“Estuary,” Fjord said. “Is what it’s called. River gets salty.”

Beau sticks a finger in and licks it. “Huh.”

“River’s going pretty fast,” Fjord says.

“It is,” Caleb says.

“No,” Jester says. “No, no no no, we can find—we can—“

Caduceus had never wanted to be buried at sea. He had told Fjord that, after a funeral in Bluecove the autumn before. He’d picked a plot in the Blooming Grove, when he was a kid. All of the Clays had.

Some part of Fjord had taken that as a given. Fjord would die someday, and the rest of the Nein, and Cormorant, and Caduceus would have a life beyond them, and in the end he would go home.

“We can walk down the rest of the way,” Beau says, after a pause. “To the ocean.”

“I need a new object,” Jester says. “Do you know what he was wearing?”

“Do it on him,” Fjord says. He stands with the help of the staff. It feels sturdy in his hand, like a lifeline. There’s wet sand on his pants.

“No, it only works on objects, we’d have to scry on people and we already tried that.”

“On his body, he means,” Caleb says.

“He’s not—“ Jester spins to glare at him, then appeals to Beau. “He’s not dead! He’s not—“ she spins on her heel and charges further down the river towards the ocean.

Fjord can’t bring himself to contradict her. He just stands there.

“Hey, man,” Beau says, and awkwardly puts a hand on his shoulder. “Do you…do you want a hug?”

Fjord wants to wake up. Fjord wants this to all be a horrible dream, wants to wake trembling, wake screaming, so that Caduceus sits up in bed next to him and pulls him close. He wants Jester to come walking back with Caduceus, found by some miracle safe and sound further down the shoreline. He wants to have found this staff in the hand of its owner rather than wedged in some plants partway down an estuary, torn from the body of the man Fjord loves by the current.

Fjord wants Caduceus. Wants something better for him than this: a death full of pain and terror and a burial in a place that, for all his best efforts, Fjord could never truly make him love. Wants another forty or fifty years to keep trying, to watch their daughter grow up together, to make light along this stretch of shoreline.

But he can’t have that. And he also knows that he can’t let himself refuse to face the facts, or he’ll never be able to bring himself to believe it.

So: “Yeah,” he says, roughly. “A hug would be great.”

Beau is a bad hugger. She doesn’t know what to do with her arms, and she squeezes way too hard, and when he hides his face in her shoulder she breathes into his ear but she is trying so, so hard and that is what makes Fjord cry.

\---

Caleb teleports them back into the garden. They make too much noise coming out of the portal to be stealthy, and almost as soon as they’ve toppled into the tangle of flowers and herbs that make up the front patch, the door is opened. Cormorant shoves her way through, looking, eyes darting past Caleb and Veth, to Jester, to Yasha, to Beau, and last to Fjord. Fjord doesn’t know what he looks like. He feels—hollow. Emptied out.

“Cory,” Fjord says, trying to say it and not knowing how, and he is holding Caduceus’ staff still, and he sees her face twist and she lets out a wail before he even says it.

“Where’s Dad?” she asks. When Fjord doesn’t immediately reply, she repeats it, voice rising. “Where’s Dad?”

Fjord shakes his head. “We couldn’t find him, Cory. He’s gone.”

“No,” she says, and Jester deftly takes the staff from his hands so he can catch his daughter as she hurls herself at him. “No no no it’s not fair!”

“No,” Fjord agrees. Her fingers clutch at his shirt. He hugs Cormorant back as tightly as she clings to him. “It’s not.”

“You didn’t find him,” Cormorants says. She’s crying the whole time, but she manages garbled questions right through it. “Why did Dad leave his staff? He needs it to do magic.”

“It probably got pulled out of his hand,” Fjord says.

“Is he dead?” she asks. “The spell Uncle Caleb used didn’t work. He’s dead, isn’t he?”

Fjord would give anything not to say it. But to refuse to admit it would give Cormorant false hope, so he won’t do her the discourtesy of letting himself pretend. “I think he’s—yes,” Fjord says. “I’m so sorry, Cory.”

“How did he die?” she demands. Cormorant understands death. She is the child of a man who is a gravekeeper and a priest and a midwife, born in a graveyard. Another child might not have grasped it, but Cory has it down to the brutal details.

“I don’t know for sure,” Fjord says. He wants to spare her this, but he knows that she won’t be satisfied. “But he probably drowned.”

“In the ocean?”

“In a river,” Fjord says. “The water moves very fast and there are rocks.” That part, Fjord lets himself be comforted by. Caduceus was likely unconscious by the time water was filling his lungs. Drowning is a terrible way to go.

“Why didn’t the Wildmother protect him? Dad says that She’s always with us,” Cormorant demands.

This is the sort of question Fjord would usually pass off to Caduceus, but there will be no more of that. All that time Caduceus spent teaching him, letting him find his own answers—he never dreamed it would come down to this. He was meant to have Caduceus forever.

“She’s not always here,” Fjord says. “She lives beyond the Divine Gate, remember. She gives magic to Her followers, and they use it to protect themselves, and if they call Her beyond that She can’t always answer.”

“But this was important,” Cormorant says.

“She protected him for a long time,” Fjord says. “And—“ he bites at his lip. “Even when She can’t fix things for us, Cory—and you know She can’t—She is with us. He wasn’t alone, and he’s with Her now.”

“Can he hear us, then?” Cormorant wants to know, swiping at her running nose. “Since the Wildmother can hear us?”

“I don’t know,” Fjord says, honestly. “Do you want to try to say something?”

“No,” she says, instantly. “Not—“ she drops her voice to a whisper. “He tried to come home, right?”

“Yes,” Fjord says. “I know he did everything he could to come back to you, Cory. He loved you very much.” That, if nothing else, Fjord can promise her.

She nods. Wipes at her face again. “I’m mad at him,” she confides. “That he didn’t. Even if it’s not his fault…”

“You can be mad,” Fjord promises her.

“I don’t want Dad to know,” she says. “I want to stop being mad at him. Before I talk to him.”

“Okay,” Fjord says. “Anytime you want to, you can try. Or we can write a letter, if you like.”

“He doesn’t like reading,” Cormorant says.

“But he’d read something from you,” Fjord says.

“I’ll think about it,” she decides. “…I didn’t even say bye to him!” the horror suffuses her voice. She hugs him around the neck again. “I didn’t say bye when we went to the beach…”

“It’s okay,” Fjord says. “You can say it now, remember.”

“I wanted to say it  _ then _ ,” she sobs, and then the words stop entirely and she just cries into his neck. He carries her into the house and sits down with her. The rest of the Mighty Nein follow. They don’t hover, thankfully—just talk in hushed voices and move around quietly, cleaning up. Yasha makes everyone tea. Jester whispers in his ear, “I’m going to go call his parents, okay?”

“I—“ Fjord didn’t even think of it. “Thank you.”

She slips outside to do it. Fjord is spared hearing the result, but Jester is gone a long time, and Fjord can imagine her burning Sending after Sending spell, passing on the news as gently as she can. He tries not to think about it, focusing on cradling his daughter, hearing her heartbeat.

Eventually Cormorant’s tears slow, and she cuddles against him for a while. Jester slips back inside, tears dripping down her face, and she nods and gives him a wobbly thumbs up. “They know,” she says quietly. “They wanted me to tell you that you’re still a Clay.”

Fjord hadn’t even had time to get that far—to wonder if he might have lost the family he’d gained as well as his husband. It’s both a punch in the gut and a slow relief, rising like the tide coming in, to think that he hasn’t. That he could still bring Cormorant back to the Grove, and call Constance and Cornelius Mom and Dad, and find something left for him there.

In the ensuing quiet, Jester pulls out her tarot cards and shows them to Luc. She says, “Our friend Mollymauk had them, and when he died he gave them to Beau, and she gave them to me.”

“Oh, yeah,” Beau says. There’s an air of forced camaraderie to the whole thing. They are trying to hold it together because of Cormorant, and probably also because of Fjord, but Fjord can see the tear tracks on Jester’s face still, the way her breath hitches. Beau’s eyes are rimmed red. Yasha hasn’t said a word, just sitting quietly. And Caleb is utterly expressionless. “That was in—when was that again?”

“In Rexxentrum,” Caleb supplies.

“Where Caduceus bought the flute,” Yasha puts in.

“And you commissioned your harp,” Jester adds. “Oh! Cormorant! Your Dad—Caduceus, not Fjord—he bought this bone flute! And when you blew into it, it sounded like someone was screaming. And he played it in a band with Yasha and I.”

“It was horrible,” Veth says.

“I think I’ve gotten pretty good at the harp,” Yasha frowns.

“Your playing is lovely,” Veth says. “The flute was a menace.”

Cormorant lets out a little hiccupping giggle. That opens the floodgates, and they start to tell stories. Some of them Fjord has essentially forgotten by now; so much time has passed and so much chaos has resulted. Some of them Fjord remembers and suspects are being exaggerated either by the passage of time or deliberately by their teller (usually, Jester or Veth).

They stick to the light things—the pranks, the bone flute, Reani and the bats and the bread, the hot tub in the house in Xhorhas. They don’t touch on the difficult ones—Caduceus, lying dead under the well, burned so badly that Fjord can (could) still trace the scars at night, Fjord’s own death on the deck of the Balleater, that horrible shivering moment when Caduceus reached into him and pulled out the remnants of his mistakes, excruciating and freeing.

It hurts to remember. It would be worse to forget, or to have never had it at all. Each memory is a blessing as much as it is a wound. Here is all he has lost, but still: here is all he has had.

Most people, Fjord knows, get a lot less.

In the middle of it all, Olivia comes. She knocks at the door and Fjord goes out into the front garden with her. Cormorant is sitting in Yasha’s lap then, sniffling, listening to Veth tell a story about fighting a dragon turtle. Fjord is somewhat grateful to step out to avoid the turtle-y details although he dreads explaining things to Olivia.

He doesn’t have to, mostly. “Anders told me what happened,” she says quietly. “You’re sure...”

“The bridge washed out,” Fjord says hollowly. “He swam—pretty well, but. The river was high.”

She nods. “I’m sorry,” she says. The sincerity is clear despite the simplicity of the words.

“Yeah,” it comes out as a rasp. “Thanks.” A thought occurs to him. “I was thinking about—his body is gone, but. Some kind of. Burial. Funeral. Some way to say goodbye...”

“Yes,” she says. “It’s done, for sailors, often. We try to do it soon, but can wait, if—“

“No,” Fjord agrees. “Soon is good. Cad says—you do it fast. Put them back in the earth. How soon is—tomorrow?” It’s been more than two days already, though of course Fjord hadn’t known.

“Tomorrow,” Olivia promises. “We’ll arrange things. Let people know.”

He can’t imagine telling more people than he already has that his husband is dead. He’s selfishly grateful Jester had to message the Clays. It’s a relief to know the town will already be told, will not be looking for Caduceus when Fjord comes to them next.

“I’m very sorry, Fjord. He was a good man,” Olivia says.

“Yeah,” Fjord manages. “He was.”

“The Wildmother will take care of him,” she promises, and squeezes his arm. “Get some rest.”

“Thanks. You too.” He turns and walks back into the cottage. Six sets of eyes find him immediately. “We, uh. We’ll do some kind of burial. On the beach tomorrow.”

“He wanted to be buried in the Grove,” Cormorant says instantly. “In the Grove. Where I was born, remember?”

“I remember,” Fjord says. That’s another little blow. “But we don’t have a body, Cory. He’s—burial at sea, is what it’s called. It’s a fine burial. The sea is Her domain too, you know. He’ll make it home fine.”

She nods, finally. “But we’ll say the right prayers for him anyway?”

“Yeah,” Fjord says. “Olivia is letting people know, getting...what we need. We can talk about—if you want to say anything...” The logistics of loss are overwhelming.

“Tomorrow,” Caleb says, intervening. “You need to sleep, Fjord.”

Fjord knows he’s right. He is exhausted, drained by the riding and the searching and the magic but most of all by the grief. “We should sleep.” He glances around. The cottage was not made to support this many visitors at once.

“I want to sleep with Dad,” Cormorant says plaintively.

“Yeah,” Fjord says. “Alright.”

“How about we all sleep together,” Beau suggests. “Camp out. Like old times.”

“Ja, okay,” Caleb says. Jester nods. So they strip both the beds. Yasha and Jester haul the mattresses down onto the floor of the living room. Beau brought a bedroll that she adds, and Yasha spreads hers on the other side—they are the only two who still camp regularly. Then they all settle in with the blankets and the pillows. Cormorant snuggles up against Fjord, tucking her face under his arm.

Jester ends up on one side of them, Yasha on the other. Cormorant starts to cry again, and Fjord holds her close and closes his eyes. He can’t fix anything and that aches. He hates to feel useless. But there’s no cure for this.

“I want Dad,” she sobs out.

“I know,” Fjord says. “I’m sorry. I miss him too.”

He strokes her hair and lets her sob until she sleeps. He does not try to stop her tears.

Caduceus had once sat with a woman who had lost a baby as she sobbed and sobbed for hours. He’d been good at it; as good as he was at delivering babies and less nervous about it. She’d cried and cried and had said, at one point, “I can’t stop crying.”

“Then you need to cry,” Caduceus had said, simply.

He’d explained it to Fjord, later. Had described it like a poisoned wound. There was no cure for a wound like that except to lance it, let the misery of it bleed out slowly. It would come back, he’d said, at first often, and then more slowly, as years pass. It might eventually fade entirely and might not.

But you had to cry first, if you needed it.

And Fjord, the orphan, Fjord who wept for parents who he never met and never wanted him, and most of all Fjord who knows exactly the degree of hope and safety and love Caduceus brought her as a father because he felt all those things too—Fjord knows that Cormorant needs it.

When she is still in his arms, breathing settled into sleep, he doesn’t bother smoothing out his tear-soaked shirt or rearranging her to be less encumbered. He just lies there and breathes, and tries to think no further than tomorrow. No further than tomorrow, when they will say goodbye on the beach. No further than tomorrow, when Fjord will be a widower.

He will be a widower for the rest of his life, and he thinks that he will probably be saying goodbye for all that time, too. But that distance, that journey, the next forty years down that passage—it’s too much, too far.

There is only tomorrow, and Cormorant sleeping, and his friends around him. Yasha’s hand is on his back and he doesn’t know when she moved it there. It’s a little awkward but he knows she intended it as a comfort, and he is comforted merely by that thought, and in that way he does manage to sleep.

\---

They go down to the beach in the morning when the sun is rising. Fjord dresses slowly. He digs into the back of his closet for his formal things. He doesn’t own much black beyond his armor, and black doesn’t seem right for remembering someone as bright as Caduceus, anyway. So he takes out instead the beautiful fine shirt he wore when he was married, the sleeves embroidered with near-invisible spidersilk waves, and the pants that Jester and Caduceus had bought for him in Nicodranas on the grounds that they made his butt look great, and a deep blue cloak trimmed in silver that Caduceus had bought for him on the grounds that it was both weatherproof and resembled the Star Razor.

Cormorant is awake in her bed when he comes in, staring out the window. “You’re wearing the pretty cloak.”

“Yes,” Fjord says. “Do you want to pick something?”

“Does it matter?” she asks. She sounds genuinely curious, not despondent. A philosophical seven year old, they—Fjord—has.

“Do you want it to matter?” Fjord says. “Because no, if it doesn’t matter to you, it doesn’t matter.”

“Why did you dress up?”

“Because it felt right,” Fjord says, honestly. “Because I’ve always dressed up for important things, and this feels important. And because Caduceus liked it.” He hadn’t even considered using an illusion, not until this moment, sitting here with Cormorant. He can just imagine the face Caduceus would have made at him.

“But he’s dead,” Cormorant says.

“So?” Fjord says. “I think he would have liked it. You asked why we weren’t bringing him back to the Grove yesterday.”

“He wanted to be buried there,” she says.

“But he’s dead,” Fjord says. He wants to check over his shoulder to see Caduceus’s face, judge how he’s doing at this. But he can’t. Conversations like this are his job now, all alone. “So why does it matter?”

Her face scrunches up, and then smooths. “I want to dress up,” she decides.

“Alright,” Fjord says, and they pick out a blue dress that Jester bought for her. It’s a teeny tiny bit too short now, since it’s from the winter before, but Cormorant doesn’t notice and they’re going to be on the beach anyway, so probably it’s safer that the fabric is a bit above her knees.

The rest of the M9 don’t have clothes suitable for dressing up, so they wear what they always do. They still stand out, Fjord realizes, when they all get down to the beach. Caleb dresses nicely these days, the clothes of a professor, all in the Xhorhasian style. It’s a coin flip whether Jester or Essek has picked them out, but they suit him. Jester wears a fluffy pink dress, in better repair than the clothes she used to travel in. Veth stands out in the burgundy dress she came in, jewelry clinking with gems and buttons mixed indifferently. Beau is wearing her Expositor’s dress and manages to make it look especially official. Yasha is Yasha, but she has gathered flowers—the flowers that Caduceus grows along the fenceline because they are beautiful and good for nothing else, in yellows and pinks and whites, and wears them in her hair.

Essek arrives not long after, in his own fine Xhorhasian garb. He keeps a low profile, but still draws some attention—even with the war long past, the Menagerie Coast does not see too many dark elves. Still, when Fjord greets him warmly no one looks at him askance again.

They simply accept that the people who have come to be with Fjord in this moment are good people, and Fjord is grateful for it.

Anders draws him aside at the shore. “There are some words that are customary,” he says, “But they’re usually for lost sailors. And these past few years, we’ve mostly left it to our resident priest.” His smile is a little bitter at the irony. “I’ll take it if you’d like, but if you’d like to say what you want to say and the rest will follow, that’s alright too.”

Fjord stares past him, out at the ocean. It’s a familiar thing, the most familiar thing in the world to a boy from Port Damali, to a sailor, and now to a paladin of Melora, the Wildmother, the Goddess who rules these waters. All last night and through this morning, up until this moment, his mind has been curiously blank. He’d intended to hand the whole thing off to whichever neighbor would take pity on him.

But as he stands there, he has the thought that the sea is Caduceus’s grave, and then he imagines the neat tombstones in the grove, and thinks of epitaphs, and eulogies. What do you say, in a moment like this? How do you capture in words the whole of a life?

“I’ve got it,” Fjord says. The sea breeze feels—not stronger, today, but more present. Like the Wildmother is in it, or maybe someone else. “Thank you all for coming.” He raises his voice a little, but everyone quiets immediately and looks towards him. His voice doesn’t have any competition beyond the roar of the waves and the distant calling of the gulls.

“The first time I met Caduceus,” Fjord says. He starts out looking at them but then he can’t; he looks sideways towards the waves instead. “He was risking his life for a bunch of strangers, because they’d walked into his home and asked for his help, and he offered me his hand and helped me out of a cage.” He lets out a breath, breathes the salty air back in, remembering. “And then he came with us, and he knew—things, about people. I half thought he could read minds. And the longer we were together the more I admired him, because he knew exactly what he meant to do, and he believed we were capable of—of anything, really. And he told me he had faith in me when I had no faith in myself.

“I was—I made some mistakes, before I met him, and after too, honestly. And he helped me see options for—my life, and who I could be, that I didn’t believe were even possible. And he reached into the darkest place I’ve ever been, and he pulled me out,” Fjord’s eyes are stinging, and it isn’t just the salt on the wind.

“I would not be here, without him. And I would not be this same person. And—I am, quite honestly, terrified to find out what the world will look like, with him gone. But. Caduceus grew up in a graveyard, and he knew better than anyone—and he would tell you, if he were here—that out of a death something else will always grow. And I will be here to find out what that is.”

“Thank you for—letting us make a home here,” he says to the gathered villagers. His eyes fall on the Mighty Nein, and he says, “Thank you for being my family, and his. Wherever he is going—that place is better for it.”

It is the right thing to say; he feels it, and his vision blurs over. He feels arms around his waist and the familiar weight of a hug from Jester. And then there is another, smaller set of arms, and it’s Cormorant, and then there is Yasha, and he thinks that is Beau, and Caleb, and he is surrounded by people holding him together.

Caduceus dragged Fjord out of Uk’otoa’s grasp, and out of death, and he pulled the rest of them too, Fjord knows. Pulled them out of their self-loathing and their doubt and their pain and into admitting what they meant to each other and doing the right thing. Challenging them, reassuring them, listening to them; their compass pointing to truth and love and the right thing, whatever it was.

Whatever comes—Fjord has this, has the Mighty Nein and has the Clays and has Bluecove and has the Wildmother and has Cormorant, every good thing in his life left to him is because of Caduceus Clay.

No words are going to be good enough for that, not if Fjord tried to talk for a thousand years. But everyone here understands at least a fraction of that because they knew Caduceus, because they are feeling at least a fraction of the loss that Fjord is feeling, and he can let the rest of it echo in the waves and the calling of the gulls and the world that was better for Caduceus being in it.

\---

Afterwards, they all head back up to the cottage and get dreadfully underfoot. Under any other circumstances, the Mighty Nein packed into their little house on the cliff face would be hysterical. Fjord shifts through the memories, trying to picture when each was here last. Jester has come before, but Beau hasn’t—they had traveled to meet her instead, in Nicodranas. Yasha and Veth have come too, Veth many times and Yasha less often but for longer stretches of time. When Cory was three she’d stayed the whole summer. 

Yeza and Luc stay with Cory down at the shore to play in the sand. Fjord is glad she is briefly gone because he needs to fall apart right now, and in front of her he would prefer to keep it together. 

Most of them sit down on the floor or at the table, but Caleb goes through the house with such a thorough single-mindedness that Fjord half-wonders if he thinks Caduceus might be hiding in a cupboard. All he unearths, though, are herbs and spices, medicinal plants and potion ingredients, a cupboard stacked with healing potions that Caduceus still makes—made—regularly even though there is no constant string of fights to deplete their supply. Beau stands up with an interested noise when Caleb starts shifting those around in the cupboards.

“Take them,” Fjord says. Beau looks at him.

“We don’t get a lot of use out of them,” Fjord says. “He barely even sells them.”

Making healing potions would be an honest living, but the village already scrapes together to pay for his services as a healer. Often they take payment in-kind; eggs and milk, salt and cabbages and seaweed and always, endlessly, fish. Once Fjord let slip that Caduceus doesn’t—didn’t—eat it and he’d thought the village was going to have a conniption. But he still cooked it, and Fjord has hundreds of near-identical memories of Caduceus swiftly gutting one on the wooden cutting board, standing at the counter Caleb is now crouching on to rifle through the upper shelves.

“Thanks,” Beau says. She packs them carefully in her bag—Fjord doesn’t tell her not to bother, that Caduceus uses the good bottles, double-walled with enchanted glass. They used to get into so much trouble that it was worth it. Some habits, he thinks, you never break. 

Jester skips over. “Can I have one too?” 

“You planning to get into a fight soon?” he asked. 

“No,” Jester says. “But his taste better. He added honey, you know. I think it was honey.”

“Molasses,” Fjord says. 

“That’s right!”

“Can I?” Yasha asks.

Fjord has been watching Yasha stalk around all day. He’s pretty sure Yasha would get into a fight tonight if she thought they’d let her. He nods and lets her pick a bottle. Honestly, he knows how she feels, except he doesn’t, because he doesn’t think he has the energy to punch something. Fjord just wants to collapse on his mattress and cry. 

Caleb has wandered out of the kitchen and is, by the sounds, continuing to root through things in Fjord and Caduceus’ bedroom. Fjord almost calls him back and then decides he doesn’t care. 

“We could make cupcakes?” Jester suggests. 

“I don’t know how,” Fjord says. “Did you learn?” 

“No,” she says, “I didn’t think—“ and abruptly her lower lip starts to wobble. ”Caduceus always...” 

Fjord hugs Jester while she sobs, which is tremendously convenient, because he also needs to cry again. They sit in a heap and weep, messily, together. Jester looks awful when she cries. Her eyes go red and puff up and her face turns purple. Fjord is sure he looks no better, the green of his skin making his reddened eyes more pronounced.

Sometime in the middle of it, Caleb comes back. “I was looking at his armor,” he says. “I know you said he—was not wearing it.”

“He—I mean, he was a healer,” Fjord scrubs at his face and forces himself to sit up. “He didn’t need it. It probably,” he glances at the soaked wood of the staff, propped against the wall to slowly dry. “It would have made him drown quicker.”

Caleb nods tightly and leaves again. Fjord stands, slowly, since he’s already committed to not curling into a ball for the rest of forever. Jester stands too, when he holds out a hand and helps pull her up. 

“We could give the cupcakes a try,” Yasha suggests in a low voice. So they do. Fjord finds a recipe and they bake. It is like going back in time, being with all the Nein again. It is an unmitigated disaster. They end up picking eggshells out of the batter. Flour spills. On three separate occasions someone turns and tries to call Caduceus for help, and there is a collective broken silence every time.

Caleb walks in again while Yasha is futilely wiping a smear of flour from the counter while tracking it across the floor with her foot by accident. “What was he thinking?” Caleb snaps. His Zemnian accent is thicker than usual. “What was he thinking?” It has been a long time since he has heard Caleb sound this enraged. Something dangles from his hand. 

“What?” Fjord can’t imagine what it is. He brushes his hair from his face, leaving a smear of powdery white on his forehead, and steps closer. 

Caleb’s fingers are gripping a chain, from which a heart-shaped pendant dangles. 

He whirls on Fjord. “Why wasn’t he wearing it!” 

“I don’t know,” Fjord says. He’d forgotten all about the Periapt. He’d forgotten Caduceus still had it.

“If he had worn it he might be with us! Why wouldn’t he...”

Fjord remembers when Caduceus never took that necklace off. Remembers when he used to find it with his fingers at night, watch it get soaked in the bath. He can’t even remember when Caduceus stopped wearing it, except that it was sometime between coming to the house and now. Whenever, Fjord supposes, he started to dare to believe this life was real and certain and theirs. 

“He felt—safe,” Fjord says to Caleb, raggedly. “He was—we were supposed to be safe.” 

There is pain and relief in that statement in equal measure. Caduceus felt safe. He probably never saw it coming. But it is better, Fjord supposes, that he has died in a sudden way, lost to nature and bad luck, than if he had died suffering and scared at the hands of men. “I wish he’d—“ Fjord breaks off. There is no good to be found in wondering if the Periapt might have saved him. 

Caleb nods. He grips the chain. 

“Keep it,” Fjord offers. 

Caleb shakes his head, but doesn’t give it back. Fjord turns back to help Jester and Yasha finish the cupcakes. They follow Caduceus’ scrawled instructions as exactly as they can, and Fjord instructs Caleb to let them know when twenty minutes has gone. They are in the oven when Yeza returns with the kids. Cory runs and jumps up and hugs him immediately. It is a greeting Fjord had thought she’d been on the path to outgrowing, but it has apparently come back. He can’t say he minds it.

“Ahh, Miss Cormorant,” Caleb says.

“Yeah, Uncle Caleb?” 

“I have something for you.” And he takes the Periapt—carefully retied, Fjord notes, for a smaller size—and loops it around her neck. “This was your father’s and I gave it to him. It will help keep you safe.” 

She nods, very seriously, and hugs Caleb too for good measure. He catches her looking at it periodically, touching the pendant. 

“She’s a little young for something like that,” Fjord says, very quietly, to Caleb. “But I appreciate the thought.” 

“I do not want anything to happen to her,” Caleb says, very simply. 

Fjord nods. He watches them all, love and grief gnawing on each other in his gut, until Caleb says twenty minutes have passed. 

He could swear they followed instructions exactly, but the cupcakes taste awful.

\---

After that, Fjord makes a bit of a project of the cooking thing and instantly regrets it. The thing is that none of the rest of them are talented at it, and with everyone sticking around for a few days and the only other option being the greasy one-note fishy fare of Mel’s tavern, food becomes a necessity. But this was always Caduceus’ job, and Fjord hardly knows where to start.

He tries to begin with what he has been left, but Caduceus’ recipes are a haphazard mess. For one thing, they’re more for baking than cooking; Caduceus started writing down the right ratios as he learned to bake, and so most of the things Fjord remembers Caduceus making are in there—the rich brown bread, the blueberry muffins, the black moss cupcakes for Jester and the strawberry cake Fjord had always liked best.

But cooking was another story. Caduceus had only bothered to write dinner recipes down at all in the months immediately before and immediately after Cory had been born, when Fjord had earnestly begged for some guidance in the kitchen, and his own sense of how food was meant to be put together didn’t translate well to the paper. Fjord always followed those recipes like a child learning to play the harpsichord—largely technically correct but utterly lacking artistry.

Caduceus had done the cooking, so he’d also done the shopping, or sent Fjord out with a list—and Fjord had never even considered the mental energy of it, because he surveys the kitchen now and has no idea what they have, what they need, what they might be running low on. He can’t even think of the full set of ingredients for one meal without looking it up, and Caduceus kept poor records and Fjord doesn’t have the faintest idea what goes into something when Caduceus has written “season” or simply writes “broth”. He feels like an idiot. He feels like the worst husband in the world—surely he wasn’t this useless before?—and he feels like he is constantly falling into the void Caduceus has left behind, so deep that he will never find the bottom.

Jester suggests it when she’s standing at the counter, reading through the recipe books with him. He’s trying to find something nutritious he can make that Caduceus actually described all the pieces of. Jester is reading through the cupcake recipes for what must be the third time. “Are you sure you want to stay here?”

“Why would I leave?”

“Because it keeps reminding you of him?” she suggests, sadly.

What he can’t tell her is that this is why he stays. He wants to be constantly reminded, and he is— Caduceus is always there. Always standing at the fence looking out at the sea like he did for hours in the first days after they moved in, peering down the coast on clear nights to try and spot the Mother’s Light. Always pacing the halls, singing to Cory in Sylvan during those long months when it was the only way she would deign to sleep. Always gathering his potions and herbs quickly from the shelves when someone came for a doctor. Always suggesting the name of a seabird for their daughter, always praying in the spare moments and talking to the flowerbeds and sleeping in Fjord’s arms.

Caduceus is gone and Fjord is not; the echo of Caduceus is what remains, the last notes of a song reverberating in the house, in Fjord. Maybe someday the memory will wear from the walls, but for now Fjord can hear his presence resounding still and he cannot stop listening until the last note falls silent.

“I’ll think about it,” he says, but he knows he’ll never live anywhere else.

\---

The Mighty Nein have to leave him eventually. There isn’t enough space for them here and they all have lives. Veth and Yeza and Luc go the next day. Caleb comes back after, but he takes Beau the following morning, as they return to their respective duties. He writes a death notice and it is printed in the paper in Rosohna; Essek brings it along with letters of condolence from a bunch of people Fjord didn’t even realize would remember them.

Jester lingers a bit, but eventually she goes, too, hugging Fjord tightly and clutching copied-over recipes from Caduceus’s books. Yasha is the last one left, and she tells Fjord one morning that she had a dream last night and is going, but she’ll come back soon. 

They all go out to the market together, that day. People are too kind and undercharge him and Fjord doesn’t have the energy to argue. He and Cory pick squash and potatoes. Yasha shows her how to swordfight in the yard while Fjord does laundry. They have sandwiches for lunch and Fjord makes a mediocre vegetable hash for dinner. He reads to Cormorant and she goes to sleep in her own bed, although he knows she might end up in his in the middle of the night.

Fjord goes out into the dark and sits on the porch and stares out at the garden. He should go through it, make a list of what’s there before it all goes to seed as the year grows colder. He won’t remember what Caduceus planted, otherwise.

“Can I sit here?” Yasha asks from the doorway.

“Yes,” Fjord says, after a startled moment. For someone so tall, she can move so quiet. “Of course.”

Yasha sits down beside him on the porch and follows his gaze out across the garden and then up to the stars. “It’s very beautiful here,” she says.

“It’s—yeah. It’s a good place,” says Fjord. Yasha knows it’s beautiful here. She spent that summer here, four years ago. She is just looking for things to say, Fjord thinks, because no one knows what to say to him now.

“I slept with him,” Yasha says, all of a sudden. Apparently she had something to say after all. “Not in—not in that way. In the same room, I mean. After what happened in the Chantry. I didn’t want to be alone and he felt—safe. He always made me feel very safe. You, too?”

Fjord nods. He swallows hard around the lump in his throat.

“He did not tell you,” she says. “He did not tell anyone. I—liked that about him too. He kept our secrets.”

Fjord nods. “The night I—when I threw away the falchion. I woke Caduceus. I needed healing, and I thought—he would know what to do. He wouldn’t tell everyone else.”

“He was a very good man,” Yasha says, definitively.

Fjord nods.

“It will...not get different,” she says. “But you will get used to it.”

That is when Fjord remembers that though all of them loved Caduceus, all share his grief—Yasha is the one who has also been widowed.

“Oh,” Fjord breaths. “I didn’t—“

“You will miss him for a long time,” Yasha says, matter of factly. “Maybe forever. But eventually you will stop looking for him everywhere. He will just be here.” She taps Fjord’s chest. “That is not such a terrible thing.”

Fjord thinks of it; thinks of Yasha’s little story about sleeping with Caduceus when she was at her most broken, because he was their healer, because being around him was like stepping into sunlight. Thinks about Caduceus being gone from the world, and thinks about all the memories of him, all the little moments like Yasha’s, as though they were physical things. Teacups to wrap up in cloth and pack away into the hollow of his chest cavity. Lined up behind the line of the scar knit shut by the power of his husband’s faith.

He thinks, still lying on the table, of Caleb‘s carefully written little death notice. He is survived by... Fjord hates the way that sounds. You survive a storm. You do not survive Caduceus. You mourn him. You catalog, fruitlessly, the ways your life would be so much less for not having known him. And you hoard every fragment of a memory you have.

“What,” Fjord stumbles. “When he—what did he say? That night.”

“He told me he didn’t snore,” she says, after a pause. “But he did. I liked it. It felt...”

“Safe,” Fjord echoes her. She nods. They go quiet again.

“He believed he would become part of the earth,” she says, finally. “Didn’t he?”

Fjord nods. He knows the thought brought Caduceus comfort, but he hates the image that flashes behind his eyes of Caduceus, rotting on the bottom of some estuary, in the depths of some sea he did not really love.

“Then,” Yasha says, “You are lucky. You are living in a world that loves you very much.” 

Her fingers tap the dirt in demonstration. Her pale fingers blur against the pale sandy soil, and Fjord gives in and cries, letting the tears drip down his face onto it. The dark spots fade quickly, water carried down into the hungry dirt. He thinks of the droplets extending, like fingers stretching across the sheets at night, as though they are in some unknowable way still reaching for each other.

Yasha takes his hand. Fjord feels, if not safe, then less lonely. A little stronger—strong enough, if nothing else, to wait for dawn.

\---

In the days after everyone has gone, the house becomes quiet and still. Even Cormorant’s grief eventually becomes subdued; some nights she pads into his bedroom in the middle of the night, sniffling, and curls up next to him, but others she sleeps through peacefully. On the nights that she doesn’t come, Fjord often wakes himself and peers into her room to make sure she’s still there. Then he walks, silently as he can, around the house, touching the table and the windowsills and the shelves like talismans. Caduceus walked here. Caduceus lived here. If his ghost is still standing in the kitchen, tending the garden, sitting up in bed next to Fjord—well, then Fjord can’t see it, but he wants it to be true.

In the damp cold of the season, the fog rolls in around their house and the town below vanishes in it. Fjord stares out the window and is reminded of being at sea. He is at sea, caught in a windless lull, adrift without a destination.

His compass is lost, broken. His northern star has gone out.

Fjord tries, very hard, to remember the way.

Mostly, he tries to find the Wildmother in the mist. He remembers when it was easy; the mist folded around the little house like a blanket, turning the garden into a phantom sea, flooding out beyond the little fence crawling with vines all the way down to the ocean. It had been Caduceus who woke him then, with the thunk of a knife on wood as he cooked breakfast or the whistle of the kettle on the stove, and Fjord would cup his hands around the mug of tea Caduceus would hand him and stand on the porch, staring out into the fog-enveloped garden, and he would feel the Wildmother, present, breathing, singing in the damp salty air. 

He can’t feel Her now. He tries. Some mornings he succeeds, but not this one, woken by some sort of nightmare in the early hours, grateful only that whatever noise ripped from him as he gasped awake didn’t wake Cory asleep in the next room. His heart is still beating too fast, and over the years he has found his own ways to reach the Mother, but the first and the easiest has always been through Caduceus, following his gaze, his voice, his light. And Fjord now tries it without meaning to and chokes on the absence of him, tugging hopelessly on a rope that has been unmoored.

He wanders out into the fog-soaked garden and sits in the wet dirt and aches. He doesn’t cry—he’s never been quick to cry, not since the orphanage—but he sits and feels empty. Feels the absence of the person he chose to spend the rest of his life with.

He is struck by the image of Caduceus, trembling in the wake of the Wildmother’s answer about Cormorant. How bravely he faced his own grief. But Fjord has never been Caduceus.

No one, Fjord thinks, will ever be Caduceus. Not Fjord, who will never be so sure or so wise or so easily, automatically kind. Not even their daughter, although Fjord’s favorite parts of her are the parts that resemble him, her soft ears and her smile and the way she sometimes looks right through people and sees something bigger spilling out of them.

The glow of the lantern in the window is dimmed but not completely blocked by the fog. From his seat in the dirt, Fjord can see the little wavering flame, occasionally brighter, occasionally flickering, alternately exposed and enveloped by the mist.

Still—in the fog, in the cold, night after night, it burns on.

So can Fjord.

Something in him settles, at the realization, and he gets up and goes back in the house feeling no less alone, but a modicum less lost.

\---

Fjord dreams of knocking, and then he wakes. It is the softest awakening he can remember in days. No rush of water; no screaming; no waking up sobbing. Just the knocking. He opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling and remembers not to reach across to the other side of the bed, always empty now. He blinks into the stillness.

The rapping at the door continues. Not a dream, then. Fjord heaves himself up with a low groan and makes his way towards it. The noise will surely wake Cory if it hasn’t already, and Fjord determines he will shoo them away as quickly as he can. A glance through the window says the sun is barely rising, and it’s a day of rest on the Coast. No polite company should be bothering them at such an hour—certainly even the impolite of the village are kind enough to let Fjord have the hours of the night to grieve.

“My daughter’s sleeping,” he says sharply as he pulls the door open.

Rheada is standing there, wearing a traveling cloak over her smock. “Where’s Caduceus?” she demands.

“Gone,” Fjord says, hollowly.

She pushes past him into the house, as though the word doesn’t even register. “When will he be back? I can’t be gone from her long, she keeps bleeding—I didn’t even want to go but nothing I try is working and I thought he might have an idea, or even some magic—“ she whips around and takes Fjord in for the first time, the dark circles under his eyes and faint stubble, still in his nightshirt. “What do you mean, gone?” She steps closer and sniffs the alcohol on his breath. “Did he leave?”

“No,” Fjord says. “Or—yes—“

“Gone where?” she scrabbles in the pockets of her smock. “If someone in the village knows—I’m sorry about whatever happened but I need him right now—“

“Me too,” Fjord says. “Gone home to the Mother, Rheada.”

She stills. “Oh, no. No. That’s not—firbolg live for—what  _ happened _ ?” Anguish and sympathy flood her features.

“I wasn’t there,” that admission scrapes his throat. “But a flood, from what I heard. Someone called him up north. Someone was ill, and there was a storm, and—“ the images still don’t make sense to Fjord, the broken bridge, the still-damp soil. “I got—a friend of ours, we went looking. Couldn’t find him. Found his staff.”

Her eyes are big and shiny with tears. “Oh. Fjord, I’m so sorry.”

“Yeah,” he says. “Me too. Wish he was here to help you.”

“I have to—go back. I don’t know what I’ll do. I’ll try.” She glances around. “He didn’t write anything down, did he?”

Fjord shakes his head, almost laughs at the idea. “Not even the fucking recipes.” There are no answers here, but he still wants to offer her some sort of comfort. Fjord knows more than anyone what a mentor can mean to a young person without a family. “Do you, uh—I know he meant—a lot to you. Do you want—I have his things, if there’s anything—“

Rheada shakes her head, though. “Already I have—“ she lifts her hands to her ears and shows him the little carved wooden spirals. “He gave me these. And my medicine bag and everything in it—I didn’t bring it, I left it with the woman—but all of that, he gave me too.” She smiles wetly. “I think he gave people a lot of things? You too?”

Fjord extends a hand and calls the Star Razor to it. He turns it and feels the weight in his palm before he lets it go. A gift from Caduceus, along with the symbol of the Wildmother on his bureau, and the ring he still wears on the fourth finger of his left hand. The cups and kettle on the counter are all from Caduceus, too, and the fancy coat that hangs in the closet, and the health potions that are still left on the highest shelf, and the garden that has inexplicably seemed to stay in full bloom for months now even though he knows it will fade soon.

“Papa?” Cory asks, poking her head around the doorway, hair rumpled. She has Caduceus’ grey skin, and his knowing eyes, and his open heart, and she stands at the center of the life that Caduceus has left him, the most precious gift Fjord has ever been given.

“Fjord?”

“Hmm?”

“I asked if he gave you things, too?”

“Everything I have,” Fjord answers truthfully.

\---

The beach is wide and desolate; Fjord can’t put his finger on any one singular thing that makes it eerie, but the complete effect certainly is. The sand is a little too pale, the moon hangs low in the starless sky, and the perpetual in-out of the sea sounds like a low moan.

“Fjord,” Caduceus calls, from a distance. Fjord barely hears it over the water. Caduceus has never learned to shout properly, but Fjord has learned to listen. “Come here?” And he’s not too far when Fjord turns, standing a dozen meters down the shore.

Fjord comes. He is half-expecting the oddly soft sand to open up and swallow him with every step, but he makes it to Caduceus just fine, staring straight ahead the whole time, so that when he gets there he’s staring at Caduceus’ chest instead of his face. He reaches out and presses a hand against it, and Caduceus is warm and solid beneath his palm.

He looks up. Caduceus is smiling but he looks haggard, as unshaven as Fjord, as though in his dying he has also suffered from their separation. (Fjord hopes not. If he can wish anything for Caduceus now, it is peace.) He is barefoot, and his pants are ragged, his coat filthy and bedraggled, the white linen of his shirt gone grey and rust-colored. The lichen has proliferated, growing along the edges of his sleeves. Fjord tries not to think of rotting, tries not to think that these are the clothes he last saw Caduceus in. If this is what his subconscious mind has conjured, his husband as he must have drowned—

“I’m dreaming,” Fjord says.

“Yes,” Caduceus agrees.

Fjord considers it. He could say anything. No one—not even the man he desperately wants to say those things to—will ever know. So he just says the first thing he can think of: “I miss you,” and wraps his arms around him. Caduceus hugs him back, always too bony but warm and soft all the same. He rests his chin on Fjord’s head and Fjord melts into him. Only the smell isn’t quite right—too much salt and musk, a little rot. Caduceus really does look like he’s tumbled through the sea. In life he was always better groomed, more carefully dressed.

“I miss you too,” Caduceus says. “How is Cory?”

“She’s okay,” Fjord murmurs. “She misses you too.”

They keep standing there. Fjord keeps holding on. “Do you want to just stay like this?” Caduceus asks, very gently.

Fjord does; he would like to stay like this forever, wrapped up in this dream, in Caduceus. “It’s not real,” he says, before he finally draws back.

“It’s a dream,” Caduceus says.

“Yes,” Fjord says.

“Being a dream doesn’t mean that it’s not real,” Caduceus says. “You used to vomit saltwater.”

He shudders a little at the recollection of the nightmares. Now he has an entirely different sort, he supposes. This doesn’t qualify, though. For all the uncanniness, he is dreaming about standing on a beach, somehow in the arms of his dead husband again. He’ll take that as a gift from his subconscious.

“You’re not really here.”

“This isn’t really anywhere.”

“I keep seeing you,” Fjord says, the words bursting forth like a dam breaking, rushing with enough force to knock out a bridge. “I think, out of the corner of my eye, you’re there. Or just outside— Or I think, we need to buy cheese, or, Cory says something and I think, wait until I tell Caduceus...” he clutches at him. “And I can’t. I can’t. I see you everywhere and you’re always gone. My own ghost.”

“I’m sorry,” Caduceus says. “I never meant for this to happen.”

“It hasn’t gotten easier,” Fjord says. “I think part of it is that I don’t want it to.”

“Why not?”

“It seems right,” Fjord says.

“It’s not right that you would be haunted,” Caduceus says. “Not by me. Not by anyone. I want you to be—I have always wanted you to—find purpose. To be at peace.”

“Not right as in—right as in fitting. Not deserving. You didn’t deserve to die. There, you win, Caduceus—no one deserves anything. There’s no justice. No mercy.”

“Now, you don’t mean that,” Caduceus says.

Fjord reaches up and grips at Caduceus’ hair. It isn’t soft like he remembers. It’s knotted, salt-encrusted. “It’s not fair.”

“No,” Caduceus agrees. “But that doesn’t mean there’s no justice or mercy.”

“You can’t pretend this is—it’s not okay.” Fjord is not okay, and he doesn’t know how to express it to this wraith his mind has conjured.

“No,” Caduceus says. “But. We are just. We can be merciful. If there is light in the world it is because it has been created. It will be okay because we will make it so.”

“But you’re gone,” Fjord says.

“You’re the champion,” Caduceus says. “You carry Her light as much as I have. And She is still with you.” He cups Fjord’s cheek, gently. His fingers are thinner and more skeletal than Fjord remembers. “You are a beacon. You don’t need me.”

“I know,” Fjord says. And despite the open, aching wound of saying it, it’s true. He will live, there in the house that was once both of theirs. He will raise the daughter who looks more like her father every day. He will look at the garden and at the sky and at the sea and feel the Wildmother in all of it and feel Caduceus in Her and he will survive and be grateful for it. He is capable of all of that. But— “But I want you.”

“I want to come home,” Caduceus says. “You are—I said, a beacon. A light to follow.”

“Aren’t you home?” Fjord says, confused.

“There’s going to be a storm,” Caduceus says, staring past him at the cloudless horizon.

“Caduceus—“

“I love you,” Caduceus says. “If you remember nothing else, remember that.”

Fjord blinks, and opens his eyes onto the ceiling of his bedroom. He stares upward, disoriented.

For a minute he thinks he hears the low moan of that desolate sea. Then he realizes it is water, as a flash outside briefly lights the window and the shutters rattle. Outside, it is raining.

\---

“The first year is the hardest,” Olivia tells him, quietly but firmly.

Fjord is sure that’s a common enough platitude to the newly bereaved, but the echo of it—said on this night, on this path, except then everything was flooded with Caduceus’ light—still strikes him. “He said that too,” Fjord says. “Everything gets easier.” He watches Cory wander ahead. She has good eyes—some smudge of orcish dark vision, he supposes—and so he doesn’t call her back and insist she hold his hand, even though he wants to.

“He was right,” Olivia tells him, kindly.

“About everything,” Fjord says. Then he remembers Caduceus, smiling, Caduceus taking Fjord’s hands in his and assuring him everything would be fine, that there was nothing to be afraid of. That Fjord’s nightmares were nothing more than his fears made manifest. He had been right, for a while, until he wasn’t. “Almost everything.”

Cory has stopped at the terminus of the path to examine a beach rose, which lets Fjord and Olivia catch up despite their more sedate pace. She plucks it and straightens up, holding the stem gingerly.

“Do you think Dad’s going to be there?” Cory asks.

“I don’t think so,” Fjord says, guessing at her meaning. “I think he found his way home alright. But I’m sure he’ll appreciate the boat anyway.”

Cory nods; apparently he’s guessed correctly. Fjord knew of death at seven, in the abstract way of the orphan, but never anyone he loved personally—he can’t, even now, think of someone he might have grieved fiercely at that age. Cory knew of death before it had taken her father; Caduceus had always been open and honest with her about it, about the fish in the market, and the gull corpse they found along the beach and buried, and the old fisherman who had died of pneumonia one winter after a protracted illness. She has come with them to the sea for Hallowtide since she was an infant. Ghosts are a known quantity, but she still looks relieved at the idea her father has not become one.

“I want to put it on the ship,” she says, and Fjord obediently lowers it so she can reach.

He can see so much of Caduceus in her; the care with which she winds the rose through the rigging of their tiny Balleater, the solemnity with which she regards it when she’s finished. Her hair is dark like Fjord’s, but her ears are all Caduceus, and he can see them shift slightly as she begins to hear the rest of the village, congregating on the shore.

Anders and Olivia split off from him and Cory as they reach the crowd, and Fjord realizes why when the wave of people opens up and envelopes them. The quiet voices become a wave of their own—“I’m sorry for your loss,” and “We remember him tonight,” lapping around him. It would feel trite if it weren’t so sincere, if he couldn’t see that the young woman who had lost her husband at sea, Elizabeta, was being surrounded in the same way. Fjord has never been accepted into a place the way he has been here, the way the people here knew and decided to love him and Caduceus and Cormorant. Mourning has begun to feel like carrying a stone, always, invisible upon his shoulders. In this moment, surrounded by identical grief, he is both acutely aware of the weight and feels as though it is somehow lighter.

He and Cory come through the crowd at the water’s edge. No one says a word, but someone extends a match to light the candle of their ship and it joins the waiting glowing fleet. Everyone stands and waits and looks at one another. Fjord doesn’t know how they began this before, but for the seven years before this Caduceus has been the one to break the silence.

Now he has joined them and there is no one to speak to the dead.

“Clay?” Elizabeta asks. “Will you?”

It takes Fjord too long to realize she means him; he wants, instinctively, to look up and to his left, over his shoulder.

He almost shakes his head. His throat is tight, and he can’t imagine forcing the words out. All he can imagine is Caduceus, standing here, lit only by small flickering candles and the moon and the water and yet somehow glowing. And it is that image, wrapped so strongly with the sound of Caduceus’ voice, that lets Fjord speak.

“Unquiet spirits,” he says. No one moves when he pauses. There is no sound but the dull roar of the ocean. “May you use these lights to guide you to the other side. May you rest well knowing the seeds you have planted still grow and your own light shines on within us. May you find peace in returning to the Mother, in Her sea or Her earth or Her air.”

Tears sting at his eyes and he lets them fall, swallowing hard, determined to make it through to the end. For Caduceus, Fjord thinks, prayer was always inextricably linked with magic—his supplications answered, the power he tapped into a gift rather than his own. Fjord has never quite felt it so cleanly; he prays, certainly, but it is not the same as doing magic. But now, it feels more like casting a spell than any prayer he has ever uttered when he looks out to the sea and says, “May you find release from the chains that bind you, and may you find your way home.”

He gives the boat to Cory then, and she lowers it with the particular intense concentration only children can manage. She is so perfect and beautiful, he thinks suddenly, vision blurring again. The candle’s flame casts the shadow of the rose back against her as she nudges the little ship out to sea. There is so much of Caduceus in her that it hurts, sometimes, to look, and hurts worse to ever stop looking.

“The first year is the hardest,” he whispers to the sea, and it is the truth and it is a lie—the truth, because no year could ever be harder than this; a lie, because he cannot imagine that time, even lapping like seawater over glass, can ever dull the edges of this loss to make it something beautiful rather than something that wounds.

\---

Fjord knows, not because of fact, but because of the deep-seated ache that has settled into his heart that he will dream tonight. He never knows exactly what the dream will be—what words will be spoken or what fresh grief he will wake with—but for the last three months the subject has been constant, and indeed when he opens his eyes, he finds himself on a desolate, darkened beach.

It takes him a moment to realize that this is not the starless shore he has dreamed of before. He is standing on the beach in Bluecove, where he stood not hours earlier. The sand is damp and rough beneath his bare feet. He glances down at his clothing—he is inexplicably on the beach in his nightclothes. Above him the familiar starscape gleams. Behind him is the village, asleep at this hour, lit only by a few still-hanging lanterns. The lights must be off in their cottage, because he cannot make it out in the lavender-black blur of night that rises up behind the village. 

He walks into the water. It is warm, lapping at his ankles, because the water is usually warm there, even in these colder months. He isn’t entirely sure why he feels compelled to wade in, except that the sea is there and beautiful, reflecting in the water the lights from the village further up the shore.

As he wades deeper, water soaks through his pant-legs and then closes in around his waist. It feels colder the further it reaches up his body, but the reflections of the lights are beckoning and beautiful.

It is only as Fjord continues on, the water rising all the way up to mid-chest, that he realizes the lights are not reflections—they are the tiny fleet of boats, carrying their candles out into the dark. As Fjord follows them he continues deeper, the water rising up to his chin and then his face and then he is entirely submerged.

In the darkness beneath the waves he can somehow breathe. The water feels warm and pliable, almost like air, but he can’t tell direction. Everything seems to have a blue glow. The light from the surface has vanished entirely. He swims blindly, unsure if he ascends or descends.

Eventually his feet hit the bottom again and he walks through the sand as though along a shoreline. On through the blue, he continues—consciously he has no idea where he is going, but his body at least knows to follow some unspoken dream-path and he is carried along with it.

There is no change in the scenery except that he knows when he has reached his destination. He can make out a dark shape curled there, and he recoils a little— _ fool me once, shame on me _ , but Fjord knows now that dark things lurk at the bottom of the ocean. He will not bargain with them again.

But this is no dark thing; when the figure—because it is a figure—lifts its head, Fjord can see Caduceus, hair turned to a loose cloud in the current. He wears the same thing he always does in these dreams, the same thing he always now will—trousers, shirts, leaf-embroidered coat—and they are even worse for wear. So is Caduceus; the blood is easy to spot on his face, unwashed by the water, although it is still mostly invisible on his dark clothing.

“Fjord,” he says. 

“Caduceus,” and Fjord reaches out and takes him into his arms. This part of the dream is recognizable. Caduceus always feels real in his arms, thin and tattered and still utterly existent. Caduceus falls forward against him, hooking his chin over Fjord’s shoulder, but he doesn’t reach out and hug him back. “Are you—“ 

When he pulls back he sees that Caduceus’ hands are clasped in front of him—drawn close, palms pressed together, wrists connected. Like someone has bound them in front of him.

“Caduceus,” Fjord tries to draw his arms up but can’t; he can see no chains but knows where they would fall, by the angles of Caduceus’ wrists and the deep red sores that ring his wrists.

Caduceus smiles at him, but he still looks very sad. The smile isn’t fake; he obviously means it. It’s just that rather than wiping it away, the joy merely makes the sadness more evident, an image in high relief.

Fjord wants to free him, but there are no chains to break. Instead, he lays his hand on Caduceus’ wrist, pressing fingers along the ragged line of the wound and letting divine energy soak into it. “Does that help?”

“Seeing you helps,” Caduceus says. “Yes. Always.” 

Fjord can’t even tell if he felt the magic; he doesn’t know how the world works here, or what he is supposed to do. “What do I do? What is this about?”

Grieve, a voice in his head says, in a familiar Zemnian accent. This is about grief, nothing more.

A younger Fjord would have thought the same thing. But Caduceus has always—had always—believed dreams meant something, and Fjord’s own dreams have been far more real. He remembers too vividly that dream of Caduceus drowning, not so many months ago. What could he have done, if he acted then? Maybe nothing. It would have been silly to go with him on every house call. 

At the very least, he should have asked him to wear the Periapt.

“This is enough,” Caduceus says. And Caduceus—perpetually honest Caduceus—means it, because of course he does. But it’s not enough for Fjord—not when he is still feeling that aching pit of absence, and not even the ghost of his husband who lives in his mind seems able to offer him comfort.

“No,” Fjord says. He casts about for something, anything, and all he sees is the strange featureless blue and Caduceus’ sad, sad smile. “No, it’s not, it’s—” he breaks off as he spots light, above them.

“Hang on,” he says, and starts to swim towards it.

“Fjord,” Caduceus says, and there is the closest thing to alarm in his voice that Fjord has heard in a long time. It breaks his heart but doesn’t shatter the dream-certainty that the lights are important.

“I’ll be right back,” he says, and then he turns back and clutches Caduceus’ wounded, invisibly bound hands. “I’ll be right back, I promise.”

He kicks up. The lights seem further away once he gets off the ocean floor. He swims up as quickly as he can, but they are already starting to vanish, one by one. He takes more rapid strokes, desperately kicking. There were once hundreds—then a hundred, fifty, thirty, ten. By the time he grows close there is only one, and it seems to dissolve as he swipes at it, and his fingers close around something with a sudden, sharp pain—

\--when he draws his hand back, his fingers are curled around the stem of a sea rose. One of the thorns digs into his index finger, and he lets go and sticks the injured digit in his mouth, mindful of his own tusks. He wonders, looking at the rose, at its familiarity—did he watch Cory place it in the boat this evening? Is this whole dream bound to be a loose collection of the emblems of his grief, imprinted on his mind?

He swims back down. For a long moment he is afraid that he has lied—that he won’t be able to find Caduceus again in the blue. But in the way of dreams, he ends up there before him.

The naked relief on Caduceus’ face reminds Fjord of a dozen horrible moments—Caduceus trembling, Caduceus drowning, Caduceus whimpering for help surrounded by wolves—and like every time, it is remarkable and a terrifying burden that it is somehow Fjord’s presence that alleviates the fear.

“Here,” Fjord says, and he has to put the rose directly into Caduceus’ hands because he can’t reach out. He curls Caduceus’ fingers around it for him, one by one, gently avoiding the thorns. As soon as he’s done it, he feels incredibly silly.

“Thank you,” Caduceus says.

“It’s—sorry,” Fjord says, uselessly. “It doesn’t do anything, I know—this is just a dream—“

Caduceus smiles, and there’s still sadness in it, a sadness that Fjord is beginning to suspect is just his own wrenching inescapable sadness reflected back, but it’s somehow lessened in that moment. “Maybe,” he says. “But sometimes all you need is something to hold onto, isn’t it?” He holds the rose before him, exactly as Fjord placed it in his hands, like a fragile and precious thing.

Fjord cups his hands around Caduceus’. “Yes,” he says, and he sits down in the sand with him and holds on until he wakes, hands clutching at the empty sheets beside him.

\---

Fjord and Cormorant have developed the habit of sitting on the porch together after dinner. Fjord makes tea, which Cormorant stirs four spoonfuls of honey into before she’ll drink, and then they sit out in the chill air and look out into the darkness, at the lights of the town and the stars reflecting on the water. Since it grows dark early, Fjord lights the lantern for the window on the way out, and sometimes he glances back at it and sees the glow from within as well as beyond.

“I’m not mad at Dad,” Cormorant says that night, without preamble. “Anymore.”

“That’s good,” Fjord says, because it feels good. Then he isn’t sure, so he asks, “Why not?”

“Because...it wasn’t his fault,” she says. “And I think I was only mad because I was really, really sad and I wanted to feel something else. And I was angry at the Wildmother also but I didn’t want to be mad at Her, or you…and now I feel kind of bad because I. Haven’t been talking to him? For a bad reason.”

“It wasn’t a bad reason,” Fjord says. “You weren’t ready.”

“I think I’m ready now,” she says. “Do you think he’ll still hear me?”

“I think if he’s in a place where he can hear you, he wouldn’t have stopped listening,” Fjord says, after a moment.

She nods. “Dad,” she says, and Fjord almost says,  _ what,  _ until he realizes her eyes are fixed on the middle distance. That she isn’t talking to him. “Um. I miss you a lot.” Her eyes are shining with tears. She still cries a lot. Fjord doesn’t, anymore, and sometimes wishes he could cry more because it always feels like a relief when he does. “We’ve picked almost all the vegetables, and Dad said the prayer you always say at Hallowtide and he was almost as good as you.”

Fjord laughs softly and reaches over and takes her hand. She squeezes his fingers back. “...I think of questions I want to ask you all the time, and I can’t anymore, and so I just sort of keep them, but if it’s okay I’m going to start asking you again. It’s okay if you don’t answer. I’m not—I was mad, a little, but it wasn’t for good reasons and I’m sorry. I think I was avoiding talking to you because I thought it would make me miss you more. And I guess it does a little.” 

She pauses to wipe at her tears, now flowing freely down her face, with the hand that isn’t in Fjord’s. He digs a handkerchief out of his pocket and holds it to her nose. She blows, automatically. “But um. It’s kind of nice.”

She goes quiet for a moment. Fjord sets the handkerchief aside. “I really want you to come home,” she whispers. “But, um. I hope it’s really nice where you are. Even if I can’t think of anywhere as nice as here.”

She straightens up a little, fidgets with her hair, which is getting a little long. Fjord doesn’t really know what to do with long hair, not the way Caduceus did, but if she wants it long he’ll figure it out. He thinks she’s done, and then she says, “Bye, Dad. I love you.”

Cormorant nods, decisively. Lets go of Fjord’s hand and picks up her teacup in both to keep it steady. “Okay,” she says to Fjord.

“You know you can talk to him again,” Fjord says. “If you want.”   


“I know,” she says. “But I didn’t say bye last time. I...really wish I said goodbye. So I wanted to say it now. Just in case he can hear it, so he knows that I wanted to.”

“He knows,” Fjord says. “I promise you, he knows.”

She nods. They sit and drink tea in silence for a while, before Cormorant asks, “Why do you keep putting the lantern out? The one in the window. You do it every night now.”

There are a lot of ways to explain it, and Fjord eventually decides on the simplest one. It has the benefit of being the true one, which Caduceus would approve of. “Do you know the lighthouse in Nicodranas?” Fjord asks, after a moment.

“Yes,” she says promptly. “The Mother’s Light.”

“We don’t have a lighthouse here, because Bluecove is very small and most people sail in during the day. But in big ports, or places where the coast is very rocky, sailors use the lighthouses to guide them home in the dark.”

“Are we a lighthouse?” she wants to know.

“No,” Fjord says. “Not really. It’s a very small light, and lighthouses are out from the shore. We’re on the cliff beyond the village, so it’s not very good for ships judging where the coast is.”

“But it’s like a lighthouse,” she says.

“Yes,” Fjord says. “Or a beacon in the dark, at least.”

“For visitors?” Cormorant is not a good liar, and Fjord can tell in her voice that she’s fishing. So he waits her out, and then she says, “For Dad?”

“In a way,” Fjord says. “I liked the idea that some part of him might be able to come back to us, to listen to you, or know we remember him. We don’t have a grave besides the sea, but the sea is very big and it’s a lot of things to me besides that.”

“May you find your way home,” she says, and it takes Fjord a moment to place to prayer she’s repeating.   


“May you find your way home,” he echoes, and he’s saying it to Caduceus, and to Cormorant, to the piece of himself that has drowned also. It feels like a spell, and a prayer, and a promise to the both of them like the oath he swore to the Wildmother, like the vows they made to each other.

Cormorant yawns, and the spell breaks. He helps her gather up the cups and they go inside, and when Fjord falls asleep the light burns on in the window.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: [Enderesting](https://twitter.com/enderesting/) did two beautiful pieces of art for this fic, [here](https://twitter.com/enderesting/status/1297927792634494976?s=20) and [here](https://twitter.com/enderesting/status/1298057919410380800?s=20)!
> 
> It would mean the world if you could leave a comment.
> 
> I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr or [@chromecatalists](https://twitter.com/chromecatalists/) on Twitter. Feel free to drop by--I would love to talk about this fic.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _As the world gives into the period of dusk, the sun gone but the light remaining, the stars beginning to appear one by one like candles going on as the sky darkens, Cormorant says, “Can we do this forever?”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here we are.
> 
> Thanks go to: Jelly for beta-reading; Star for everything and especially the song she wrote for this fic, which you can listen to [here](https://soundcloud.com/user-460002969/sailors-prayer); Ender for the art she did, [here](https://twitter.com/enderesting/status/1297927792634494976?s=20) and [here](https://twitter.com/enderesting/status/1298057919410380800?s=20); and everyone who commented--it's meant the world.
> 
> The beautiful art in this chapter was commissioned from [@lurrlonde](https://twitter.com/lurrlonde).
> 
> Thank you for coming to Bluecove with me one more time.

_Three months earlier_

_Afraid_ , Caduceus thinks, as soon as he looks up at the girl standing at the garden gate. _She is afraid._ Her little fingers are gripping at the fencepost. Her arm shakes. He sits very still in the dirt, not wanting to rise up too suddenly and frighten her more, in case it is him that she is frightened of. He doesn’t think it is, though. He is an oddity, but children are very rarely scared of him.

“Hello,” he says, when she just stares at him for a long moment.

“Hello,” she says, after a slightly too-long pause. “Are you Caduceus Clay?”

“Yes,” he says. “Are you looking for a healer?”

“Yes,” she says. Her voice trembles when she says, “My aunt is sick…”

Caduceus lifts his chin and checks the horizon. It’s still early in the afternoon. The ache in his bones says that a storm is coming in, but he can’t see clouds on the horizon yet. Rain tonight, then. “Where are you from?”

“Ellet on Reid,” she says. “It’s a village, north, on the river Reid in the wood.”

“I’ve heard of it,” he says. It might start raining by the time they get there. He rises carefully, mindful of both her fear and his aching knee, but she doesn’t flinch and he hides his own little wince. “What’s your name?”

“Nadia.”

“That’s a lovely name,” Caduceus says, warmly. She smiles back at him, very shakily. “You look about my daughter’s age. Her name is Cormorant.” Like Cormorant, Nadia has dark hair, but otherwise they don’t look very much alike, aside from both being small girls. “Let me wash my hands and get some things, and we’ll see what I can do for your aunt. Can you tell me in what way she’s sick?”

Nadia trails him into the cottage, hesitating in the doorway. He waves her in; he’s not going to make her stand out in the garden. She watches him with big eyes as he goes to the basin and cleans the soil from under his fingernails. That’s another thing she and Cory have in common—the watching.

“In what way?” Nadia asks, uncertain.

“Is she coughing? Does she have a fever?”

“She—yes, a fever,” Nadia says. “And her, um, her nose is running? And she is—cold.”

“Alright,” Caduceus says. “She feels cold, or she is cold?”

“What?”

“Does she say, “I am cold,” or is she cold when you touch her?”

“She says it,” Nadia says, after a pause. Which is really just confirmation of the fever, Caduceus thinks, as he gathers the proper herbs. She hasn’t said coughing, but mucus might mean it anyway. This time of year, it’s likely to be some kind of flu. Usually it isn’t so bad, but there are always a few who get it worse than the others, and then you have to worry. Especially for the elderly or the very young or the already ill.

“Does your aunt have any children?” Caduceus asks. Ages are hard for him to gauge, generally, so he tries to get descriptors instead of numbers. Nadia looks human; what is old, sixty? Seventy? Is it really her aunt or her great-aunt? He guesses the woman might be older, or already ill. It must be a very bad flu, if it is that, if someone has sent their child all the way here ahead of a storm for hope of finding a healer.

“No,” Nadia says, which helps Caduceus not at all. He’s thinking about the idea of sending Cory by herself such a distance—it must be a half day’s walk.

“Why didn’t you go to Saulterwauld?” he asks. If he’s thinking of the right village—which he might not be—Saulterwauld is far closer.

“What?”

“Rheada,” Caduceus says, “In Saulterwauld, is a midwife and a healer. It’s much closer to you, I think.”

“Oh,” she says. “But I was supposed to come here.”

“Alright,” he says, and because she’s looking worried again, he says, “Don’t worry, I can help her.”

“Thank you,” she says. He finishes gathering everything, wraps it up in oilcloth in case the rain does start and puts it in his pack. He picks up his coat and his staff. “You’ll have to show me the way,” he tells her.

They walk. It’s a very long walk, but it’s still early enough that he isn’t worried about much. The storm would be inconvenient, but Nadia has a coat and so does he. He can always conjure light. She’s very quiet. She keeps glancing at him, nervously. She can’t keep a pace—she walks too fast and then too slow, and Caduceus struggles to stay with her.

He is fully limping by the third hour of their journey. The sun is at three-quarters in the sky, and he leans on the staff. He manages to coax Nadia into a semblance of a conversation. She is an only child. She has no father. Her mother is a weaver. They keep a garden.

An only child with no father, sent far away on her own—that can only mean her aunt is very sick indeed. Respecting that, Caduceus never asks her to slow down, and she is of the age where she doesn’t notice the pain of someone trying to hide it.

She gets quiet again at the edge of the wood, and nothing Caduceus says—no question about gardening or comment about Cormorant—can draw her out of it. He has an odd sense of drawing near to death and lets her have the silence. This will be difficult for her, whether Caduceus can save the woman or not. He knows what fear looks like, and knows that no reassurance he can offer would be fully true.

Instead, he says, “I’ll do all I can, and the rest we leave to the Wildmother. It will be alright.”

She stares at him. Her eyes are very big and dark in her face. “How do you—how do you know that,” she says. Her voice is shaking.

“Because it is how things are,” Caduceus says. “The rain will come after us. The river will run to the sea. The world, and you, will endure.” When she just blinks owlishly at him, he says, “The rain will be coming soon. Let’s keep going.”

They continue. It is another half an hour into the wood when it begins to drizzle. He pulls up his hood and is mindful of the soil growing looser, listening for any distant thunder, when he hears voices. They are low. They stop and start. He can’t make out the language, but he’d guess it is idle chatter.

“Are we almost to your village?” he asks.

Nadia nods.

“Almost there,” he says. She seems more ill at ease the closer they get. He could tell her not to be afraid, but he doesn’t know if she’s right to be, what state her aunt will be in and if it will be something he can ameliorate. Sometimes fear is a fine thing. A true thing.

They come around a narrow curve in the path, and there are two men standing there in the roadway. They are in cloaks, but they don’t look weatherproof, which must make the rain unpleasant. The men are both human, bearded and heavyset. One of them is carrying some kind of cudgel.

“Hello,” Caduceus says, pleasantly. He can’t tell what sort of work they were out here to do, which is odd. He keeps looking for an axe, but it’s just the large club the taller man is holding.

“Caduceus Clay,” the shorter man says, and oh. Something about that, Caduceus does not like the sound of.

“Who’s asking?” Caduceus says, after a pause. He isn’t sure why he doesn’t say yes aside from the sudden uneasy feeling. He doesn’t like their tone. Doesn’t like their eyes. Doesn’t like—ah, that’s it. He especially doesn’t like the way Nadia is trembling in his periphery.

“I brought him,” Nadia says. “I brought him. Can I go home now?”

Caduceus’ thoughts, steadily spinning, halt. Nadia is afraid. Nadia is not afraid for her aunt. She is afraid for herself—afraid of these men, who have sent her to get him.

“Yes,” Caduceus says, as soon as he draws the conclusion. “Do you know the way home from here?”

“Yes,” she whispers. “I’m—really sorry.”

“Go home,” he says, and at the same time the man snaps, “Don’t move.”

“Go,” Caduceus says, quietly, shifting his grip on his staff. She is a child. Whatever these men want and whatever they have threatened her with, she needs to make it home.

Nadia hesitates. Something seems to be freezing her in place.

“No witnesses,” the man snaps, and his companion goes for the girl. Caduceus doesn’t weigh his options. He’s not a strategic thinker and she’s standing there paralyzed and she is young and she did not know. He casts Command and says, “Run,” and prays to the Wildmother that the adrenaline will keep her moving after it wears off. Prays it will send her in the right direction.

She flees, diagonal, across the path and into the woods beside it, and that’s when the man strikes him, hard, and he gets his staff up and blocks the second blow but not the third and he is somehow on the ground, dizzy, vision grey around the edges. The girl is gone in the trees and it must have been more than six seconds and he has a spell for this, but the staff has fallen from his hand and his fingers are broken where the man stamped down hard to stop him from reaching it and he is bringing the club down against Caduceus’ skull.

The world goes dark and his last, distant thought is to the Wildmother. He told Fjord once that he never stops speaking to Her, and he hasn’t yet, not in the decade alone or the years traveling with the Nein or these past ones with Fjord on the house on the cliffside, and in the last interval between light and shadow he finds one more prayer for Her.

_Please help them forgive me for going home to you so soon._

_\---_

He wakes. It takes too long for Caduceus to remember the men and Nadia and that last hit to be surprised by the waking. His thoughts are a cloud—not merely clouded, like solid stones waiting if only he can grope through the mist; the thoughts themselves are vaporous and insubstantial. Caduceus grasps for them and comes away with only dampness. His mind has utterly unmoored itself from chronology, which is inconvenient, because he’s pretty sure he has somewhere to be.

One thing at a time. A single insect in the buzzing cloud of his skull: where is he? It is dark, and it smells like straw. He is surrounded in straw. There is movement, and the rattle of wagon wheels. He’s in a wagon. He’s under a layer of straw. He tries to sit up and can’t; he is chained, manacles on his wrists and ankles, which are bound together.

He is in a wagon. He is chained up. One thing at a time. What is the first thing? _What’s the plan?_ Fjord asks in his head, and he relaxes. A plan. He needs a plan.

Step one. Not panicking is step one, which Caduceus thinks he’s managing fairly well at. It’s everything after that is troubling, because the appropriate step two continues to elude him. He is not great with plans on most good days, and there is solid evidence this is not a good day. The fact that he is chained in a wagon under a layer of straw is part of that evidence. So is the dull throbbing in his skull that spikes whenever he moves, and the wet blood he can now feel dripping down the back of his neck.

Step two should be to deal with his head wound. He is a healer. He can do that. It takes some time, moving gingerly, but he shifts his hand up and gets it pressed to his own skin and casts Cure Wounds.

Or he tries. What actually happens is that pain shoots through his entire body and his vision whites out. It comes back—he isn’t sure how much time has passed. His wounds are not cured. He just feels achy and wrung-out, and his wrists are numb beneath the manacles.

So. He has learned something: there is something here, some spell or object or person, blocking his magic. As the dull throbbing pain fades and the sting in his wrists remains, Caduceus decides that it might be the manacles. He could double-check, but he’s not eager to repeat the experience, so he’ll assume and let it go. His head is still bleeding. He can’t tell what pain is new and what is old, and taking care of his wounds now feels out of the question. He doesn’t think he can actually reach the wound, chained as he is, and when he tries to twist around and try anyway the wave of nausea hits him and he has to pause in order to breathe.

He is so distracted by the confusing symphony of aches that is his own body that the voices from above him take a moment to register. Yes—from beyond the straw, he can hear talking. Two men. They speak in Common. He recognizes them from the wood.

“And they won’t spot him?” one of them says. Caduceus’s mind conjures the image of the taller man, the less talkative one.

“Gods, Faro,” says the shorter man, exasperated. “There’s barely any border control. They see hay, they’ll call it hay and let us go.”

“Well,” the man called Faro, apparently, begins.

“Don’t think I know how to do my job?”

“Bernard,” Faro says. “You know I do.”

“Then shut up and drive.”

The voices give way to hoofbeats, then, and Caduceus considers their words. This is a successful kidnapping attempt, so Caduceus doesn’t want to criticize, but it’s also not the most professional job he’s ever seen. He knows all the men’s faces and some of their names, or at least what they’re calling each other. The longer he’s awake, the more fragments of the previous hours are coming back. He’d come to in the forest, once. He remembers that they argued for a while about how best to conceal him before they dumped the straw on top. If he hadn’t needed to shield Nadia, he might have even gotten away.

Which makes the manacles—which are very powerful and correspondingly must have been very expensive—kind of odd.

These men don’t seem professional enough to have something like this. Even assuming this was a regular occupation and they used the manacles every time—say, a weekly kidnapping for ransom—it would be a big purchase. And in Caduceus’s experience, people who turned to kidnapping for money didn’t have a lot of gold to invest up front.

So there is something else going on. Caduceus decides that is step two—figure out who these people are, or who they’re working for, and what they or their employer want. It’s about all he can do, chained in the bottom of a cart, but at least it’s something.

His mood doesn’t really have time to lift, because the cart hits a bumpy patch of road and his immediate focus shifts to not throwing up. It would be gross, and also he would probably choke on it and might die.

It is possible to drown on dry land, Caduceus knows. If you get enough fluid in your lungs—blood, water, but also vomit—and can’t get the air in, that’s drowning too. And this is the worst of all possible ways to drown, so Caduceus shifts his priorities.

Step one, don’t panic. Step two, don’t vomit and don’t drown. Step three, figure out who these people are. Figure out where they are taking you, and why.

Step four, find a way out.

Step five, find a way home.

It feels simple, put like that, and something in Caduceus steadies a little—so maybe he wasn’t entirely succeeding at step one after all. But he’s got it now.

He closes his eyes against the pain, and breathes. _Don’t panic. Don’t die. Learn what this is. Find a way out. Find a way home._ The plan—as far as it can be called that—echoes in his head like a mantra, and while he more loses consciousness than falls asleep, he dreams anyway.

\---

The first few days are a chaotic blur. He wakes and breathes and eavesdrops as much as he can through the pounding of the wheels and his skull. The headache fades, eventually, in these intervals of awareness and darkness, and he begins to have a sense of time again. Overall, he thinks it might be a week by cart, but he’s not certain.

At night, they haul him out of the straw when they camp. He sits, still manacled and shackled, a chain looped around his chest to bind him to the cart wheel. He chats to the grass and the insects when the men fall asleep. He whispers his name and who he is and, as best as he can tell, what is happening to him. He doesn’t think, really, that someone will stumble upon the moth sitting on the back of his hand and talk to her about this and come to find him. But, like throwing bottles into the ocean with scraps of paper, it feels like the thing to do.

They are going north; not the north Caduceus knows, the one eastwards across the continent, but north along the coast. He’s been with Fjord to Port Damali, and although they took the trip by teleport, he remembers it’s somewhere this way. Maybe they are taking him to Port Damali—that would be good luck, he thinks. He doesn’t know anyone there, but it’s where Fjord is from, so that counts for something. And pieces of it are beautiful.

Although there are beautiful pieces to most of the world, so by that logic, Caduceus will be alright no matter where he ends up.

It has been more than a week, Caduceus decides, by the time they arrive at the city. They’ve moved inland, deliberately, avoiding the major roads and camping in the wilderness at night. To the north of Nicodranas, the foliage turns into a temperate jungle, thick with plant life and insects. The dragonflies that Caduceus murmurs to at night are large and colorful. The air is sweet with sap. It is a beautiful place, but he is becoming more uneasy by the day.

He is very far from home. Fjord must be very worried. He wonders what Fjord has told Cormorant, and whether Cormorant believes it.

He tries to question the men about what they are doing only once. They’re sitting a few hundred yards into the treeline, that night. The bigger moon is full and the smaller moon is a waxing crescent; their collective light gleams through the canopy. “We’re not moving very fast,” he observes.

Faro looks up at him. “What’s it to you?”

“Just that it would be pretty easy for someone to catch up,” Caduceus comments.

Bernard glowers. “No one’ll catch up.”

“I’m not alone,” Caduceus says. “I did know people.” He almost mentions Fjord, mentions Cormorant, tries to appeal to their better natures. But he doesn’t know yet if they have better natures, and he doesn’t want his family in harm’s way.

“Who think you’re dead,” Bernard says, with satisfaction. “We knocked the bridge out. Made it look like a storm did it. No one’s coming for you.”

Maybe that’s true. Maybe it’s not. It feels true. It doesn’t mean they fell for it. Beau sees a lot of things. So does Caleb. Maybe they figured it out. Maybe they didn’t. He wouldn’t blame them if they didn’t…

So he can’t count on someone coming. Time to move on. “This isn’t an easy journey by cart,” Caduceus says. “We could have teleported.”

“Do I look like I can fucking teleport?” Bernard snaps.

“You got these,” Caduceus says, lifting his wrists to show the manacles. “Teleportation is easier, isn’t it?”

“Not our call,” Faro drawls. “The lady wants, the lady gets.”

The lady—does Caduceus know any ladies who might be angry at him?

“What is this about?” he asks. “Whatever she’s told you—“

“She paid,” Bernard says. “That’s all.”

“What if I paid you more?” Caduceus asks. He doesn’t know how much she paid, of course, but money is---well, there’s not much use for it, and the Mighty Nein collected so much of it over their travels that they’ll never spend it all. He and Fjord have sacks of gold in the cupboards behind the flour and the potatoes.

Faro looks interested but Bernard looks—hmm. That’s interesting. “Not a chance,” he spits. “Don’t mock me, boy.”

“I’m older than you,” Caduceus observes. “Probably three or four times. Why are you afraid of her?”

“What?”

“Whoever hired you. Why are you afraid?”

“I’m not afraid of shit,” Bernard says.

“Okay,” Caduceus says.

“I’m not.”

“If you say so,” Caduceus says. “But if this is just a job, I don’t see why you wouldn’t take more money.”

“You couldn’t afford it,” he says.

“If it risks your life, probably not,” Caduceus says. “Little is worth that.”

“Shut the hell up,” the man says, and backhands him across the face. Caduceus flinches. His lip stings.

“If you take these off,” Caduceus says, one last try, “I can probably protect you from her. I’m not bad in a fight.”

“Oh, are you?” Bernard snaps, and then kicks his legs out from under him. It’s easy, considering the way they’re chained together. He doesn’t stop kicking after that, and Caduceus curls up, puts his back to him and lets him bruise his side and ribs, protecting his face and the soft parts of his belly where a little internal damage can do a lot of harm.

“Stop,” Faro says, eventually, and even though Caduceus is pretty sure Bernard is in charge, he does. Caduceus stays curled up like that anyway, in the soft wet soil, breathing. It smells like mold, and dirt, and life. A dragonfly settles on his knuckles and stays there, and both the men sleep before Caduceus does.

He doesn’t ask them questions, after that.

Their arrival is precipitated by a sharp turn to the west, back out towards the ocean. They come out of the jungle and through the plum groves and he remembers the city of Feolinn vaguely when he sees the signage. They make wine from the plums, he remembers. He remembers being here with the Nein, and drinking, and the way he stood out in the streets of a city mostly-human, slightly elf, even more slightly gnome.

He doesn’t stand out this time. They pack him into a crate instead, folded like a long-limbed doll. His joints ache and his muscles cramp almost immediately. The smell of pine and the darkness eventually allows him to meditate, and he lets the long hot journey through the city pass in a blur.

He comes out of it when the crate is lifted. He smells salt again, hears the creak of timbers, the snap of ropes. The crate is loaded onto a ship, and a man he doesn’t recognize is the one who pries the lid off unceremoniously. They tip him out onto the wooden boards of the below deck, and he just lies there for a few minutes as blood floods back into his extremities. Eventually he sits up. He doesn’t see well in the semi-dark below deck, especially since the kerosene lamp the crew member is using for light is behind him.

“Captain,” someone says. “Right here.”

“So they made it here after all,” a familiar voice says, and Caduceus’s memory shuffles violently through the last several decades and then he remembers in a cold flash, like someone has thrown water into his face.

“Weren’t you dead?” he asks.

Avantika stalks around to his front and gives him an ugly look. “Why don’t you tell me?”

He knows better than to cast Eyes of the Grave, although he’s itching to, but he doesn’t need it to know what she is. He can smell the death on her. She’s what Jamedi was—not fully alive, no longer in the ground the way she should be. An unnatural thing.

Caduceus doesn’t think about Avantika that much, these days. But he doesn’t like her; doesn’t like that she served Uk’otoa, that she would have hurt them without a second thought, that she slept with his husband (the last of which is the pettiest reason, he supposes, but he still feels it). It’s a relief to know exactly where he stands with this, anyway. She’s a bad person. She wants something he won’t want to give her.

 _Wildmother_ , he prays. _Whatever she wants, let it not be Fjord._

“Well?” she says. “You know what I want. Where is it?”

“What?” Caduceus says, politely blank. Avantika’s face twists into an ugly scowl, and it occurs to him that she thinks he’s being difficult on purpose.

She pulls his head back, her fingers snarled in his hair, forcing him to go up on his knees. Someone whimpers, and Caduceus only realizes the sound came from him when she laughs. He distracts himself by looking her over. She was beautiful once, but this revenant that was once Avantika is more nightmarish than anything, her skin a sickly green, barnacles encrusted down her shoulder, the faint smell of rotting fish around her. And of course there is the fishing line that makes neat stitches all the way around her neck.

“Where is it?” she asks, again.

“I don’t know what you want,” says Caduceus, which is true although he could venture some guesses.

“The orb,” she snarls. “We know you had it. He felt you when you ripped it from Fjord’s useless corpse. Where did it go?”

“It’s gone,” Caduceus answers.

“Liar,” she says. “Don’t worry, I don’t have to get it out of you. He will.” The way she says it, Caduceus has no doubt who she means. She jerks his head back and he knows better than to make a sound this time but still he flinches. “You know you aren’t a match for us. His followers killed Fjord when he was surrounded by all of you, and they were not half so valuable to Uk’otoa as me.”

It takes Caduceus a second, but his memory supplies this more easily: the sea in storm, Beau screaming Fjord’s name, the pure cold rage burning through his veins. That feels like a lifetime ago, that horrible nightmarish battle that Fjord did not live to the end of. Caduceus has grown stronger since. He might be able to take her. But he is bruised and bound and on a ship, so even if he won a fight, where would he go? Instead, he decides to test a theory, a theory that has been growing more solid in his head this whole time.

“Did you really care for Fjord? You slept with him, but I know that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

“He’s a traitor,” she says, like she’s affronted Caduceus even brought it up.

“What I guess I mean is, were you sad when you heard he was dead?”

“No,” Avantika snaps, “And my one regret is that he is not still alive so I could do it myself.”

Caduceus hides his relief. Avantika believes Fjord is dead, so she knows nothing of his life in Bluecove, of Cory. She might find out eventually—Caduceus will have to deal with her before then—but for now it is a load off to know his husband and daughter are safe at home, out of Avantika’s cruel sight.

“I’m taking you to him,” Avantika promises. “And you’ll take me to that orb.”

“We’ll see,” Caduceus says stubbornly. She regards him for a moment, and then viciously backhands him.

“You will,” she says, while he reels. “And you will shut up or I’ll do much worse.”

So he sits there, quiet, chained, and she goes back up onto the deck. The ship sets sail after several more hours, but they leave him there bound in the hold until well past dark, when the same crew member comes with rations. He sets the dried meat aside, eats the beans and the bread and drinks the ale, unpleasant and worse for being thinned with water.

He revisits the plan in his head. He is not panicking. He is not dead. He knows who Avantika is and what she wants and he cannot give it to her. He needs to find a way out, and find a way home.

The ship shifts back and forth gradually, and with a sinking feeling Caduceus realizes that the farther from port they go, the farther he is from help, and from his family, and from a fate better than sinking into the sea. Even if he did break out, what would he do? Where would he go?

The ship rocks. The waves lap. Caduceus tries to plan, but he is exhausted and his cheek and scalp are stinging on top of the bruises from before, the marks from his bindings and the pangs of hunger. Instead he falls asleep and in his dreams, finds his way home.

\---

It is a long sea journey. Caduceus thinks they feed him twice a day, and he counts twenty-eight meals before things get—odd. The same crewman brings him food every time. He is very young, younger than Caduceus was when he left home, certainly, even allowing for human and firbolg age ranges. The third day Caduceus sees the falchion strapped to his hip, and thinks, _oh, no. You are too young for this._

“What do you know of the creature you serve?” Caduceus asks him, the next time.

“What?”

“Uk’otoa,” Caduceus says. “He will ask things of you, and someday they will be more than you wish to give him. Let me help you.”

The boy drops the tray in front of him with a clatter. “I—have to go.”

“What sends you dreams at night,” Caduceus says, “You should not be afraid of it.”

“I’m not afraid,” the boy lies, and runs. Caduceus sighs and picks at the bread. The next person who descends is not the boy; it is Avantika.

Caduceus smiles at her benignly. “Hello.”

“Simon seems convinced you’ve used magic on him,” Avantika greets him. “Read his mind. But I see that those are still secure.” She taps a wrist with a nail. She does it with the confidence—the habit—of someone whose fingers are usually perfectly manicured, but hers are rotting a little. Everything about her screams _unnatural,_ hisses _this should not be_.

“I don’t read minds,” Caduceus says.

“No,” she says. “But if I hear another report that you’re trying to turn my crew against me, I’ll nail your tongue to the roof of your mouth and Uk’otoa will rip the answers he needs from your thoughts alone.”

Caduceus isn’t sure that Uk’otoa can do that, and he’s not sure that Avantika is either. He’s not sure she’d risk it. But he also doesn’t know if her anger will overcome her good sense, so he is silent the next time the boy comes.

On the mornings when Simon has dark circles beneath his eyes, jumpy and distracted like he hasn’t slept at all—his gaze lingers on Caduceus a long time, and Caduceus knows he remembers.

Still—twenty-eight meals, perhaps two weeks, before things get very odd. Caduceus makes a special effort to count, because he wants to know how long he’s been away. Three weeks. A month. Maybe a month, at worst. Cormorant grows so quickly. She must be so tall. She must need another haircut soon. Soon it will be harvest time, and Hallowtide. He is missing so much.

And yet they seem no closer to their destination, or so Caduceus gathers by the dark looks the crew give each other. They’re down in the hold more often, counting supplies, rationing things out.

“What’s happening?” Caduceus dares to ask, after thirty-one meals. They’ve long since stopped giving him the meat—smart of them.

“Caught in a still,” the boy says, after a moment. “It happens.”

“I see,” Caduceus says.

“We’ll be there soon,” he says.

They aren’t. The still continues, or something like it. They end up doubling back somewhere to replenish on supplies. They’re on their way again, and things seem lighter, for a while. Then they do not. This time there is a bad storm, so bad that even Caduceus feels it. It blows them off course by several days, maybe a week. Caduceus spends the whole of it ill from the movement of the boat, praying. He has a sudden vision of the ship swamped by water, and tries to imagine swimming in these chains.

But the ship doesn’t sink. It merely—meanders. Hits bad weather, winds in the wrong direction or no winds at all. Spends two and a half weeks fleeing from a persistent dragon turtle—Caduceus nearly laughs at that one, barely managing to bite it back when Simon tells him.

Something is stopping them from getting to Uk’otoa, Caduceus thinks, and he cannot reach his magic but he knows, he knows that his prayers are being answered.

In those interminable tense weeks, Simon begins to talk to him again. At first it is merely short responses to Caduceus’s questions about the weather, about the route. Then he becomes chattier. Uk’otoa, Caduceus gathers, is growing angrier in all of their heads. Is demanding to know why his will is not being done.

“He says—“ Simon shakes his head.

“Consume,” Caduceus says, and smiles when Simon’s eyes go very wide. “I knew a man once who was in the position you are.”

“What—“ Simon’s voice shakes. “What happened to him?”

“I helped him,” Caduceus says, very quietly, in case Avantika is listening. “And I can help you. The Wildmother can help you.”

“The Wildmother?”

“Have you sailed out of Nicodranas?” At the nod, Caduceus says, “The oceans are Her domain—the oceans and the earth both. It is Her lighthouse at the port of Nicodranas, a gift from Her lover the Lawbearer Erathis. It guides ships home safely, and She will guide you, if you want it.”

“I—“ Caduceus can tell that Simon is thinking about it. “I can’t,” he says, finally, agonized. “He’ll know. Uk’otoa. And she’ll know.” The ‘she’ requires no explanation—obviously, Avantika.

“Alright,” Caduceus says. “She will be here, if you ever look to Her.”

He thinks he is making progress, but Simon doesn’t ask about the Wildmother again, not before the storm. 

It hits—Caduceus isn’t sure when it hits, he has little to no conception of time. He is sleeping, and he wakes as the ship rocks, suddenly, thrown from a dream of Fjord’s arms around him, the both of them at the bottom of the sea. It’s peaceful. It’s good. It makes him feel safe. Then he wakes, all of a sudden, and he realizes he isn’t safe at all. The ship is being tossed around like a toy in the waves.

The movement grows worse, crates rattling against each other, vibrating in the ropes that bind them in place. Caduceus himself is flung against the wall violently when a wave tosses the vessel. He breathes. This is the work of the Wildmother. This is the will of the Wildmother. He will be fine.

He believes it until the hull splits and the water starts leaking in. Then he begins to pray, at first in his head and then out loud. The water grows quickly, from a puddle to a sea until it’s up to his chest. Filling just this little compartment, it does not seem to be sinking the ship, but it will drown him and Caduceus does not want to drown.

He takes a deep breath, wondering how to time it so he can have one more before he goes below water. With the chains on him, he has no hope of swimming upwards.

 _Wildmother, please…_ Send a sign. Send a savior. But there is no Fjord here, no paladin to do Her bidding: only a cleric, a cleric bound too tightly to reach Her.

He breathes. It has been—two months? Three? How old is Cory now? How long can he hold his breath? A while, he thinks. Drowning is a terrible way to die. He wants Fjord. He wants to see his daughter again.

_Wildmother…_

As if in answer, the hatch slams open and Simon comes charging in, sloshing through the water.

“Sorry!” he says. “I didn’t realize where the leak was until Morgan said, and then I had to finish bringing down the sail—“

“Don’t be sorry,” Caduceus says. “You were just in time.”

“I took these,” Simon says. “She won’t notice.” He says it with the air of someone trying to convince themselves of something, but he produces a set of silver keys and unlocks the chains. He doesn’t have the ones to the manacles, which is unfortunate, but it’s enough to let him move, both of them paddling through the water to the stairs and then sloshing their way out of the hold.

“Stay here,” Simon demands, once they’re above deck. They’re in the thick of a storm. The sky is so black Caduceus wouldn’t know if it was daylight, but some instinct tells him it isn’t. The rain is coming in sheets. He’s already soaked, so he hardly notices except where it gets in his eyes. The ship thrashes, and Caduceus does as he’s told mostly because he has to sit down or be flung flat onto the slick, rain-drenched deck. There is a flash of lightning—close, too close—and a roll of thunder, almost simultaneous.

He breathes. He tries to think. He could—he could—

“You!” a figure looms out of the rain. Avantika. She looks profoundly corpse-like, now, red curls soaked dark and sticking to her neck. “I should kill you right now. You’re stopping us from—“ she suddenly resolves something. “You’ll tell me the location of the crystal. Right now. I’ll do it myself.”

“I don’t know it,” Caduceus says, and she draws her gleaming falchion.

“I’ll change your mind,” she says, and raises it.

There is a crash, and a bright light, and then nothing but white.

When his higher cognition comes back, Caduceus is lying flat on the deck. He is soaked through and still getting pelted by droplets, but some of the rainwater down his neck and shoulder is warm. He has the absurd thought that it was heated by the lightning, and then he realizes: of course. It's blood.

He thinks he would be screaming if, one, his nerves were processing this as _pain_ rather than a total rewiring of his entire perception of his body, admittedly into a form that seems to involve a lot more agony, and two, if he could physically open his mouth. His jaw is like a thing he is looking at in a mirror--he understands that it's connected to his body, but it feels like something entirely separate nonetheless. His mouth tastes like metal.

He's taken blows like this before, he thinks—magical lightning attacks. The actual experience reminds him a bit of the time he and Jester shared mango candy, and then months later in Port Damali Fjord had bought him a real sliced mango from a seller of exotic fruits. He can see how the two things are related, but the actual experiences bear little resemblance to each other.

His brain, distracted by re-cataloguing every nerve ending, produces the thought: _maybe you're dead._ But, no; that hadn't hurt nearly so much.

He’s panicking, which is a regression. Step one. He tries to move again and this time gets a hand to obey him, and automatically makes the sign and casts Calm Emotions on himself.

The calm passes over him like a wave, and he breathes, and smiles faintly. Caduceus slowly sits up and blinks and swallows and reassures himself that all his limbs are still attached. And then he remembers that he shouldn’t have been able to cast anything at all, which is about when the spell fades.

The lightning has thrown Avantika and him apart. He sees her, getting up, shell-shocked. The lightning hit Caduceus, ran right through him like it strikes a tree, straight through the manacles—they have split, as though by design.

This is by design, he thinks, and then Avantika is coming at him again.

“You tell your goddess,” she snarls. “You tell her the storm won’t stop me. The wind won’t stop me. This ocean belongs to Uk’otoa as much as it does to her and I will get you to him.”

Caduceus doesn’t respond. He just lifts a hand and casts a Guiding Bolt at her. She blasts him—Eldritch Blast, the sickly color Fjord’s used to be. He thinks it should hurt but he’s still numb from the lightning, so it barely registers. He casts Control Water and hurls a tremendous wave over the deck, trying to knock her away. She manages to stay upright and slash at him, but she doesn’t go for the throat.

_I haven’t told her anything, so she can’t kill me._

The thought is heartening, except then she shouts to the crew for help, and three others appear out of the night, and the fight becomes a meaningless blur. It is hard to shield himself and fight. Hard to face multiple opponents at once, in the dark, in the blinding rain.

The only comfort Caduceus has, as he summons his Spirit Guardians and lets the glowing insects come to life all around him, is that this time, Fjord is safe.

Then they are on him. He casts again, and again, spell after spell after spell. Caduceus had days like this, ten years ago, back with the Nein, days when he burned everything he had in a fight. These days, if he drains himself for anything it’s healing, and most days he goes to sleep with a large number of the spells he could manage still uncast. He spends what feels like magic enough for the last few months in these minutes and he’s still not sure if it will be enough. He hasn’t cast like this in a long time, but he hasn’t fought like this ever.

He has never fought alone.

Avantika. Avantika is giving the orders. Avantika is the one hunting him. He tries to target her, shield himself as best as he can, and he casts Blight on her and watches her rot, and then he summons a Sacred Flame and watches her burn. She’s no longer attacking and he casts it again, letting the fire take the corpse, letting it cleanse. There’s no earth to give her back to, here, and she’s right in one respect—the sea is contested territory.

This woman will not come near his family again. He makes sure she’s burned to ash before she touches the waves.

When he looks up from her corpse, the crew looks stunned. But not for long—they have their falchions, too. They have their orders and the voices in their heads and the barnacles growing up their bodies. Caduceus cannot stop them all.

Simon is there, too. Simon is looking at him, with something like fear and something like awe and something else, faint, that Caduceus can’t quite read through the rain.

“You have to get away,” he shouts over the next crack of thunder. And he draws the falchion and stands between Caduceus and the others.

Caduceus has a little magic left, and he knows then what to do with it.

He reaches out and presses a Death Ward into Simon’s shoulder. And then with his last great effort, he seizes the ocean from beneath them and lets the whirlpool take hold of the ship.

“You’ll be fine,” Caduceus swears, and there’s a terrible cracking of wood, another flash of lightning, and Caduceus throws himself into the sea.

\---

His last big spell gets him away from the wreckage. He thinks—hopes—that Simon will be alright. He has a good feeling about it. The current he summons carries him miles before it runs out, and he doesn’t have another spell for it. He just paddles, looking for another ship, or a shoreline, or something. There’s nothing. The storm is behind him, mostly, but the sea is still choppy and rough and it’s a lot to keep his head above water. The numbness has faded entirely and in its place everything aches.

There is nothing to do but swim, and so he swims.

And swims.

And swims.

Fjord taught him to swim. He does it sometimes on purpose now, in the water with Cormorant and Fjord in the summers. He thinks he’ll never quite love it, but he tries to summon those memories, of paddling, of joy. He tries not to think of how it had felt to drown, or how badly his arms and legs want to stop moving.

Always, though, it reasserts himself in his mind. He is out of magic. There is no one here. And he is so, so very tired.

He wants to sleep.

If he does, he will not wake up.

He tells himself this, and keeps going. He thinks it is for a long time, and eventually he starts to realize that he will hit a point where he has no other choice. His body will make the decision for him.

He can’t decide if he is afraid. He is mostly very tired.

There are worse places to die, Caduceus thinks. It turns out that there is a point past terror, past exhaustion, past pain, a point when his limbs have gone from freezing cold to simply numb, when his screaming muscles have turned to rubber, when the burn of the seawater against the litany of tiny cuts across his body has dulled to nothing. He is so far gone that they can’t even rub salt in the wound anymore—that feels like a clever joke, but there is no one to try and make laugh.

It feels like going into a trance, like his mind has battered against the suffering for hours and hours until the door gave way and peace, finally, flooded in. It is too real to be dreaming, but his body is not quite his anymore, either. A liminal space there on the water. The ocean of water is Hers, and so is the ocean of stars above. He tips on his back and floats whenever the sea is calm enough. It is his best chance at breath. He is doing that when the trance hits, although the sea is becoming tougher again, the waves slapping into his face, blocking his breath. He will drown. He knows this. He has known this for hours and still aches, struggles, breaths. Why?

The cry of a seabird splits the night air, the silence. _Oh,_ he thinks, and his heart cries out with the next shriek of the bird. _Oh, my love, my daughter._ Caduceus despises making promises he cannot keep.

He is surrounded by water but his mouth is dry as dust. His throat burns. He only tastes salt. _Give me the strength,_ he begs Her. _Please. One more breath. One more minute._

He feels Her, all around him, like he is communing. He can feel Her in the sky or the sea or the wind, all of it. The cold. The salt. The stars. All of it is Her, the beauty and the brutality.

 _My Clay,_ She tells him. _You have always had the strength._

It is the last truly coherent thought he has. He keeps breathing for hours, after, or maybe just minutes. The bird’s cry echoes but he is not sure he hears it again—perhaps he never heard it. Cormorant used to cry every night, not just like that but enough. That was years ago, or yesterday. She could be crying now.

Caduceus isn’t. He is too dehydrated to cry and there is already enough saltwater.

Seawater. Sky. Images. Fjord asleep, somewhere; gardening, somewhere; holding their daughter, alone, reading to the both of them in the kitchen. The picture books. The myths. The poetry—Fjord’s voice, in his head. _But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep._

Sky. Seawater. The stars have folded in on top of him and the ocean of water and of air are one. Stars surround him, on the surface of the water, glowing like candles, or a fleet of little lantern boats. He floats, upward, or down. Maybe there is something good and perfect at the bottom of the ocean. Maybe he will find it.

_But I have promises to keep..._

He inhales, maybe air, maybe water. Both taste like salt. His eyes shut and do not reopen.

\---

Improbably, the water hurts more coming back up than it had going down.

Caduceus coughs for what feels like hours before his body gives up and decides that it might as well be thorough, and so then he pukes his guts out on the deck. It’s all water, water and salt and bile, he hasn’t eaten recently enough for it to be anything else. It hurts. Coughing and vomiting are never comfortable affairs, and Caduceus’ entire body is beaten, muscles strung tight, each wracking cough like a new blow.

The woman, who must have dragged him out of the sea because he can’t remember doing it himself, just stares at him. He can’t blame her. She’s human, perhaps in her early thirties, with the weather-beaten skin of a career fisherwoman. He thanks her in between fits. She pats him once on the shoulder and then backs up as far as she can go, which is fair. Caduceus doesn’t want to be near his vomit either.

The boat is small. Caduceus is wedged up against a big bucket of crabs, still alive, scrabbling and crawling over each other and pulling each other back down.

“Stupid,” he tells them, leaning over to look. His throat feels like it’s been scrubbed out with sandpaper. His voice sounds wounded. “If you’d just cooperate you’d do just fine.”

“I beg your pardon,” the woman says.

“Not you,” Caduceus says as gently as he can. Then his lungs make it known they are not quite empty and he dissolved into another brutal coughing fit.

“What were those things?” she asks him, when his breathing has settled into a steady rasp and he has drawn his knees up to his chest to avoid his own puke.

“What?” he says. Absurdly, he thinks she must have seen the corpses of Uk’otoa’s minions, but he’d been swimming for hours. Surely he’d gotten further away. Although time had been pretty meaningless, by the end.

“The lights,” she said. “On the sea. Like candles. I followed them, didn’t I? S’how I found you.” She has the same accent as Fjord. It’s pretty common—most of Port Damali has it and half the Menagerie Coast besides—but he’s still profoundly endeared to her because of it.

The thought of Fjord, and the lights, makes Caduceus laugh. It isn’t out of humor but sheer joy; it makes his whole body ache, his lungs, his throat. He’d thought he’d hallucinated it. He’d thought it had just been the stars. “Divine intervention,” he says, and slumps back against the crabs.

“I’m heading back to the coast,” she says, eyeing him warily. “Fishing villages, one called Bluecove, one called Fleur de Mar, and then to Nicodranas. You can find passage elsewhere from there...”

“That’s just fine, thank you. That’ll get me home,” he tells her. The fear is already fading like a half-remembered dream. The pain is an afterthought. He is going home. The Wildmother has sent this ship to him and he is going home.

“Right,” she says. She looks at him like she is seeing a ghost. Caduceus can’t find the words to reassure her. He isn’t really sure that he isn’t a wraith. So he opts to just sit there against the crab bucket and wait.

They reach Bluecove perhaps four hours before dawn. “Faster than usual,” she comments, suspicious. The dock is empty and still. In an hour it will start to see its first sailors, in two it will fill up with early-morning fishermen, in three it will be fully alive. But now it is just this woman, and Caduceus, and the lapping sea.

“Blessing from the Wildmother,” he tells her drowsily. It takes him two tries to stand. He feels something on his shoulder and reaches up to find a hard shell under his fingers. One of the crabs has made it out of the bucket. He smiles at it as the woman ties up on the dock.

Caduceus can’t keep his balance properly; the world spins when he tries to rise. And he’s never been the most graceful—when he gets in and out of boats on a good day, Fjord often takes his hand to steady him. He really, really does not want to take another dip in the water—his clothes have only just dried, ragged and stiff with salt. So he just crawls out of the boat, pausing on his hands and knees on the splintery dock, before he painfully, painstakingly stands.

“Where are you going?” the woman asks, when he walks slowly past her.

“Home,” he answers, and continues up the dock onto the shore. “Thank you.”

She doesn’t answer, just stares at him when he glances back and then keeps going.

The sand is cool but it still cuts into the raw soles of his feet. The crab fidgets on his shoulder, and he sets it down halfway up the beach. Crabs are good to eat, or so he’s gathered from Fjord and Cory’s enthusiasm for them, but this one has overcome its worse nature and it seems like a morning for second chances. Once liberated, it scuttles off into the dunes.

Then he looks up. There is still the radiant spill of stars against the deep blue of the sky. On the cliff he can see their house, the outline faint against the predawn sky. There is a lantern gleaming orange and bright in the window. It looks like a lighthouse, faintly visible off the coast to a ship on a barren sea.

Caduceus has been adrift for a long time. He stares up at it, inhales the salt air, and whispers a thank you to The Wildmother for Her light and for the one he sees shining above, for guiding him, for saving him.

Then, on bare feet already torn bloody, heart lighter than it’s felt in ages, Caduceus limps the rest of the way home.

\---

Fjord wakes to a familiar weight pressing down on his chest. He keeps his eyes shut and breathes; in a few moments he will have to rouse himself somehow, beneath the heavy press of the grief, but for now he can cling to his dream.

And as dreams go, it was a good one. A new one. He tries to commit it to memory, so he can replay it: He wakes up in his too-big, too-empty bed to a knock at the door, even though it is still dark. He gets up and answers, as though on autopilot, feeling strangely, perfectly awake. And Caduceus is standing in the doorway.

_Art by[@lurrlonde](https://twitter.com/lurrlonde/status/1309295103891169285/photo/1)._

He is pale, hair bleached mostly-white, raw skin stretched too close over bone. Fjord glances at his feet automatically to see if they touch the ground. They do; they are caked in sand, and when Fjord glances back there are dark reddish-brown footprints up the path. And he smells like the ocean, like salt and brine. Fjord instantly remembers every story he’s ever heard about the ghost of a drowned sailor turning back up on the shore and none of them end well when someone lets them in.

He reaches out and touches Cad anyway. He’s no ghost; Caduceus’ hand is solid—skeletal, yes, but your garden-variety emaciation level of skeletal, not a walking corpse. “I’m home,” Caduceus rasps.

“What happened?” Fjord breathes. “How...”

“The will of the Wildmother,” he says, “Brought me home. The rest...” he looks so terribly weary that Fjord feels guilty for asking. “There is no danger now.”

It’s a non-answer, but it’s the most Caduceus of non-answers and Fjord is filled with joy at it, that his subconscious can still construct such a good likeness.

“Gods,” Fjord says, and hugs him. Caduceus hugs back; his weight sags a little against Fjord, and Fjord is a little dismayed at how little effort it takes to hold him upright. He glances down at Caduceus’ bloodied feet.

“Come on,” he says. “Arms around my neck.”

Orcs and firbolgs are built to carry things; Caduceus is not very strong at all but can still lift Fjord, and Caduceus is unwieldy to hold at his height but not beyond Fjord’s strength. He carries him into the bathroom, sets him down only to spell in the water, to bank up the fire and heat it. While they wait he draws Caduceus up against his chest, lets him rest his chin on Fjord’s shoulder. Normally Caduceus is chattier in these dreams, but he seems content to be quiet now.

“Do you want water?” Fjord asks. “Tea?”

“Tea,” Caduceus says. “I think I’ve had—enough water.”

Fjord makes sure Caduceus is comfortable before he gets up and starts the kettle boiling. He starts boiling oats and milk for porridge, too—feeling the narrow sharp ridge of Cad’s spine has made feeding him feel imperative.

When the bath is full and the water hot, he gently helps Caduceus strip off his clothes—probably beyond saving, Fjord thinks—and into the bath. The fine grey fur turns soft as he lathers it with soap; little ribbons of blood fade into the water as Fjord cleans his wrists—ringed by a raw red line, like something bound them—and gets the sand off his blistered feet. There is a strange wound on him, a branching burn that stretches from his left shoulder across his back to his right hip, like someone has soldered the pattern of a fern into his skin. But when Fjord brushes the washcloth across it, he doesn’t flinch.

His hair takes the longest. It’s soaked with salt and dried, matted in places, and fragile from sun and lack of care. But Fjord is gentle. He works the soap through it strand by strand, allows each to settle back into a soft curl in his hand. Through it all, he can’t stop touching Caduceus, thumb stroking down his cheekbone, his eyebrow, the angled slope of his ear. Caduceus leans into it, one cheek pressed to Fjord’s palm.

Fjord keeps waiting for the dream to end, for Caduceus or the Wildmother or his subconscious to tell him what this is. Caduceus to melt into an angry ghoul, or Uk’otoa to lurch up out of the bathwater.

It doesn’t. No ghouls or leviathans appear. He rinses Caduceus’ hair out, combs it smooth, and helps him out of the water into a towel. “Let me get you clothes,” he murmurs.

He comes back with a nightshirt and rose hip tea with honey spooned in for Caduceus’ raw throat. Caduceus manages to dress himself but can’t hold the teacup steady. Fjord carries it to the bedside, and then carries Caduceus to bed, unwilling to let the raw sores on his feet touch the ground. Some part of it feels overly dramatic but in this dream Fjord is allowed, he thinks. He sits beside Caduceus, helping him lift the cup, tilting it to his lips. Caduceus swallows, and smiles at him, but a tear drips down his cheek.

Fjord catches it with his thumb. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Caduceus assures him.

“What are you thinking?”

“It doesn’t taste like salt,” Caduceus says.

“No,” Fjord says. “It shouldn’t.”

“It’s been—I can’t remember when I last stopped tasting it,” Caduceus says.

“You need to eat,” Fjord says. “Can you?”

Caduceus nods, so Fjord brings the bowl.

“We don’t have blueberries,” Fjord tells him. “Just jam. Here.” He has stirred blueberry preserve into the porridge, because there are no fresh ones in midwinter.

Caduceus eats slowly, but empties the bowl. It is maybe the strangest dream Fjord has had, if only because it feels so real. He wonders if this is the Wildmother, wish fulfillment, giving him the chance to take care of Caduceus and say goodbye. He bandages Caduceus’ wounds while he eats, lets his hands linger on every angle, every damaged part of him.

When the tea is gone too, Fjord pulls Caduceus into his arms and lies back. The exhaustion missing at the start of the dream has arrived. Caduceus goes willingly and relaxes against Fjord’s chest, his own exhaustion written across every line of his face.

“I love you,” Caduceus says.

“I remember,” Fjord promises. “I love you too. Go to sleep.”

And they do, and then Fjord is here. Waking, slowly. The sunlight is already streaming in. It might be beautiful, but is it any wonder he wants to hold to the dream a little longer?

But the familiarity of the weight is not the invisible pressure on his chest that has made itself known in his half-empty house. It is older than that weight, deeper than it; it is a real, physical thing settled on his breastbone. He reaches out and touches soft hair. He opens his eyes and his fingertips are settled in Caduceus’ loose curls, his husband‘s head pillowed on his chest. One ear pokes raggedly through the tangle of hair; the other Caduceus has pressed down, perhaps unconsciously, over Fjord’s heart.

No ghosts. No dreams. Just Caduceus, here, breathing, warm in his arms. 

If it can be believed that every person gets an allotment of miracles, Fjord has more than run through his fair share. Surviving that shipwreck all those years ago. Escaping Uk’otoa’s grasp and finding the Wildmother. Cormorant. But the best of his miracles is here. Fjord married him. And he isn’t sure if it’s a new one entirely or merely the same one, like a living fluttering thing, that has carried Caduceus home to him.

Fjord gets a burst of clarity, the breaking of a wave. He understands Caduceus’s relationship with the Wildmother, he has always thought—understands the casualty with which he speaks to Her, not just in prayer but in the kitchen, in the garden, braiding Cormorant’s hair, all of it a form of worship. Fjord understands. He respects it. It’s just always been easier for him to do it carefully, incense lit, on his knees. He has to work up to it.

But this—this is what Caduceus feels, this sudden ecstatic joy. He couldn’t bear to move and disturb Caduceus, but he doesn’t need to; no prayer or ritual could feel more like he was directly speaking to the Wildmother than right this moment, when he feels Her hand in the world like this, when he is holding the proof of it in his arms. He presses his face into Caduceus’s neck, slips the hand not yet tangled in his hair down to find his fingers and hold them, a little too tightly, and thinks _thank you, thank you, thank you_ more certain in Her love than he has ever been.

Caduceus snores. Fjord tries to keep still and let him rest, but he can’t help himself—he keeps moving his fingers, checking another part of him to make sure it’s real. Here is the edge of the bandages around his wrists. Here are the old scars from those wolves, in scattered teeth patterns along his arm and ribs where no fur grows anymore. Here is the burn from the explosion that killed him. Here is the knife-wound that didn’t, still a thick ridge of scar tissue along his back. Here is a lock of his hair that has somehow stayed pink, one of only a few buried in the strands. Here is the curve of his rib close under his skin, the jutting bone of his hip, the lamb-softness of the hollow beneath his ear. Remembering, verifying. All these little details, no longer lost to him.

Caduceus doesn’t stir; perhaps something in Fjord’s touch tells him he is safe, or perhaps he has simply been pushed so far past his limits that gentleness, no matter its familiarity, is incapable of rousing him. They have spent hundreds of mornings like this, thousands of mornings. Fjord can’t imagine taking them for granted again.

It used to be that the moments felt stolen before Cormorant cried to be fed, or changed, and then as she got older before she came for breakfast. Now it feels stolen from the hands of the Raven Queen herself, that Fjord has gotten this back out of the grasp of death.

 _Mine,_ he thinks, possessively. _Not yours. Not yet. Still mine._

“Dad,” says Cormorant from the doorway, bossily. Speak of the devil, he thinks distractedly. “Are you going to get up? I want—“

She takes a step into the room. Freezes. Fjord shifts to look at her. Her eyes have gone wide, pupils dilated all the way. Her mouth has opened just a little, like she’s forgotten she was partway to words.

“He got home last night,” Fjord says. He has no good explanation, but he thinks the faint awe that he can’t keep out of the words, the lost wonder of his expression, forestalls any protest Cormorant might have about getting details. “Be gentle, okay?”

She’s already running. “Dad!” Caduceus wakes, or maybe was awake already, smiling softly at Fjord as he shifts to open his arms and let Cory seize the spot between them. Heedless of the bandages, she presses herself into Caduceus’s hold; Fjord throws an arm over both of them.

“Dad,” she sobs, and she is sobbing, her shoulders shaking. Fat hot tears soak the bandaged burn where she’s pressing her face. Fjord can’t bring himself to scold because Caduceus doesn’t. He looks wonderstruck too. One hand slides up and cups her face, with hesitant reverence. His other hand stays in Fjord’s.

“I missed you, seabird,” he tells her.

“I thought you were _dead_ ,” she says.

“Not yet,” Caduceus says simply. “Not for a while, I think.”

“You can never die,” she tells him hotly. “It’s not allowed.”

“Not for a good long while,” he reassures. “I don’t think it’ll be my time for a long while.”

“Good,” Fjord says, trying for levity, to close out the subject. He fails abjectly; his voice breaks on the word.

“I’m sorry,” Caduceus says. “I’m sorry it took so long to make it back to you.”

“You didn’t want to go,” Cormorant absolves him instantly, dripping snot. “You didn’t, right?”

“No,” he says. “And I’ve tried every day since to make it back here.”

“We put out a boat for you,” she says. “Did you see it?”

Fjord almost steps in to answer it, to say _no, he was alive, remember?_ There was no ghost for their candle ship to guide through to the next world, no spirit imprisoned on the wrong side of the gate. But that’s not quite right, is it? Because Caduceus was in chains—Fjord knows the marks of shackles when he sees them, and Caduceus’ are old and deep. It will be a miracle if they don’t scar. And he might not have been looking for the way through to the astral plane, but he certainly was looking for his way back from somewhere.

Besides, Caduceus looks very thoughtful. His thumb brushes across Cory’s cheek, neatly drying her tears. She tips her head to the side to get her face fully into his palm like a little cat. “Yes,” Caduceus says. “I think I did.”

“Did it help?” she wants to know. “I put a flower on it, also.”

“One of the only things that did,” Caduceus says, quite seriously. “You two and the Wildmother brought me back.”

Fjord tightens his hold on them both a little. “And you,” he says. “That you—I don’t know what happened, you’ll have to tell me. But you lived. You came back to us. That is…not a small thing.”

“It’s a big thing,” Cory adds helpfully.

“Did you want breakfast?” Caduceus asks her, and Fjord remembers how she came into the room with a demand. He supposes Caduceus must have been awake after all, if he’d heard it, or maybe it’s just his uncanny intuition for the needs of other people. Or the half-decade of their lives that has begun most days with Cory insisting on food.

To his surprise, Cory shakes her head and wriggles down deeper in between them. On an impulse, Fjord pulls the sheet up, cocooning them in. She sighs happily. “I want to stay here a little longer. Can we?”

“As long as you want,” Fjord promises, meeting Caduceus’s eyes over her head. Caduceus smiles at him, and Fjord feels a little rush of joy all over again and is smiling back without thinking about it, without meaning to.

“We have time,” Caduceus agrees. Fjord nods in agreement and is seized by the realization; they have time. Time not just for this, to lie in bed and wait for breakfast and hold each other, but time for another season of planting, for Caduceus to teach Fjord to cook for real, for Cormorant to get taller and get her next set of teeth and the winter and spring and summer and fall to come through again, over and over. Time for Cormorant to grow up with both of her fathers, and Fjord to never wake alone again in the mornings, and to do laundry and sweep and braid hair and bake bread and watch the sunrise and the sunset and the ocean of stars. To go out in the middle of the night in the full moon and show Cormorant the plankton that glow, and drink tea on the porch, and Fjord’s life feels—longer. Fuller. The next four or five decades are spilling over with life and possibilities, the tea kettle boiling over.

Vandren had told a story once about a hat he’d lost overboard, how it had come sweeping back in with the tide three months later on an island two hundred miles away—still wearable, he’d said. Fjord had thought it was a load of bullshit, and he still did really, except that was what this was—the tide, rushing back in like a guest who had accidentally picked something up, a stranger chasing you down, _excuse me, isn’t this yours?_ A feel-good story, the kind of thing that Caduceus means when he says _nothing this good ever happens._

Except it does, every once in a while, and Fjord thanks the Wildmother again—will never be done thanking Her—that it should have happened to him.

“We have time,” Fjord says. That is a prayer too, and he cannot keep the wonder out of his voice. “We have time.”

\---

Fjord wakes up slowly, like surfacing out of a warm pool, to the sound of voices. The weak winter sun has risen high enough to spill through the window. There are warm bodies pressed against him, Cormorant’s back against his chest, his arm sprawled over Caduceus’s back. Caduceus and Cormorant are both awake and talking quietly.

“Is it alright, then?” Cormorant is asking. “If I was mad at Her?”

“If it wasn’t,” Caduceus says after a moment, “Would you stop being mad?”

“Yes,” Cormorant says instantly. Then she pauses and admits, “…but I wouldn’t really. I’d just be mad secretly.”

“And She’d know anyway,” Caduceus says mildly. “So I think if you’re really mad, that’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

“Have you ever been mad at Her?”

“Yes,” Caduceus says.

“When you were gone?” she says. “Were you mad at Her then?”

“No,” Caduceus says. “I was grateful that you were safe, and I understand that there are limits to Her powers. She did help me come back to you, and I did not blame Her that it wasn’t sooner. But that doesn’t mean _you_ can’t be angry, you know.”

“I know,” she says, but Fjord gets the sense that Cory is saying she knows it now because Caduceus told her, rather than because she was confident in it before. The soft pattern of their voices, Cory’s questions and Caduceus’s calm surety—Fjord had grasped for this, tried to fill this void, felt helpless and falling short as he tried to mimic some scrap of Caduceus’s wisdom. It is such a relief to hear this again—to hear Caduceus again, gently explaining the tangled mess that is the world. “When were you angry at Her?”

“Well,” Caduceus says. “I’ve told you before, how I met Fjord when I left the Blooming Grove to try and find a way to fix the rot.”

“Mmhmm,” Cormorant nods. “And you traveled together and you saved Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Corrin and Aunt Clarabelle and Aunt Calliope and Uncle Colton when they were turned to stone! And made those magic crystals.” She sounds pleased with herself for remembering.

“That’s right,” Caduceus agrees. “But before I left, everyone else had left before me, to try and fix the blight.”

“Yes,” she said.

“And after they left, I stayed behind in the Blooming Grove, for a while,” Caduceus says. Fjord shifts and moves his hand across Caduceus’s back in a soothing gesture, to let Caduceus know he’s listening. Unintentionally, but rewardingly, it prompts Caduceus to revise his minimization. “For a very long time, actually.”

“How long?” Cormorant asks.

“A little more than ten years,” Caduceus says.

“That’s a really long time,” Cormorant says. Fjord cracks his eyes open to watch her. Her ears have flattened back in shock, and he imagines her eyes are very wide.

“Yes,” Caduceus says. “So while I understood, I was also angry sometimes, and sad sometimes, and lonely sometimes. And it’s okay to feel those things, even towards Her. She understands, too.”

“That’s so long,” Cormorant says. “You were gone _forever_ and it wasn’t that long. It was fall and most of winter. That’s like—ten falls and ten winters and also ten springs and ten summers.” She sits up. Fjord shifts back to give her room and sits up as well. Caduceus slowly leverages himself up onto his elbow to be eye level with her. His gaze flickers back to Fjord for a moment and he smiles.

“That’s about right,” Caduceus agrees.

“And it was _everyone_ ,” she says. “Both Grandma and Grandpa? But they were your mom and dad!”

“Well, I was a lot older than you are,” Caduceus says. “And I volunteered to stay. But it was a long time. And I was mad at them, sometimes. I was mad that they’d left me, even though I agreed with their reasons for going and still believed I had been right to stay. I was angry at the Wildmother for sending them. And I was angry at them for being away so long, even though I was also afraid from them, and they couldn’t have helped it.”

“…I was mad at you, too,” she admits in a rush. “I was mad that you left. Even though it wasn’t your fault and you didn’t want to go.”

“That’s okay,” Caduceus says.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“It’s only natural,” Caduceus says.

“I still feel bad,” Cory says quietly.

“I forgive you,” Caduceus says, and that seems to be what she needs, because she launches herself at him. The force of it tips Caduceus over and he ends up on his back on the mattress, Cory on top of him, curling into his arms.

“Careful,” Fjord says, but Caduceus gives him a winded but sincere smile and he subsides. Caduceus clearly isn’t so fragile that he doesn’t want to hold Cory (although Fjord does privately wonder if no amount of frailty would make him let go of her now).

“I’m kind of hungry,” Cory says, after another few minutes of lying there.

Fjord isn’t surprised. The sun is high enough for lunch by now, probably. They had made plans for the day for the market that dissolved entirely; Fjord wonders if they were missed.

As if in answer to the errant thought, someone knocks on the door.

“I’ll get that,” Fjord says. He rakes a hand loosely through his hair; he has pants on, which is really all he can hope for right now. He heads for the door.

It’s Cara. She’s standing there with a basket, looking a little taken aback by his disheveled appearance. She hides it well, though. “You weren’t at the market today,” she says. “So I wanted to come by with some things and check in.”

Fjord likes to think he’s been holding it together pretty well, but he knows that his neighbors worry about him. They check in on him often, inviting him and Cormorant to things, sending messages, dropping off vegetables or some salt because they “got a little extra” or always, always more fish. Fjord tries to head them off—Caduceus isn’t even there to provide medical help in exchange anymore—but never really manages to stop them.

“Yes,” Fjord says. “We had a—night. Um.” He almost prevaricates and then can’t be bothered. “Caduceus came home last night.”

Her expression shifts. Fjord thinks it might be shock, and then he realizes that she is evaluating his mental state. “Why don’t you come in,” he says, because seeing is believing and he knows exactly how much credence he’d give it if a local widower told him he’d started seeing ghosts.

Cara steps in with the basket. “I’ll put this on the table,” she offers.

“Thanks,” Fjord says. He doesn’t know how to broach the subject except that Cormorant skids in. “Hi Miss Cara!” she chirps. “Dad’s home!”

“Fjord told me that,” she says, glancing at him with a little more warmness. Cory’s exuberance is a little harder to write off as a hallucination, he supposes.

“Can we make pancakes?” she asks. “Except Dad can make them because his are better. Dad!” she hollers the last word into the next room.

Part of Fjord almost acquiesces because he wants that normalcy so badly, Caduceus back in his kitchen where he belongs. The more reasonable part recalls Caduceus’s wounds and exhaustion and the torn soles of his feet. “Let him rest a little longer,” Fjord says. “How about you help me make pancakes, and we can bring them to him?”

“Okay,” Cory agrees. She skips over to the cupboard to retrieve a bowl.

“What do you need?” Caduceus says. Cara looks up with wide eyes. Caduceus’s hair looks even whiter in the sun. He’s leaning against the doorframe for balance and wrapped in a quilt, which hides the bulk of the injuries.

“I was going to ask you to make pancakes but Dad said we could do it,” Cormorant reports.

“I don’t mind,” Caduceus says, glancing at the cast iron pan.

“Sit,” Fjord orders. “You can supervise.”

Caduceus sits. He smiles at Cara. “Hello. It’s good to see you.”

Her eyes are very big and she’s smiling when she says, “It’s good to see you too. Welcome home,” she adds.

“Thank you,” he says.

“Do you want to stay for…” Fjord glances at the sun. “I suppose this is lunch.” Pancakes for lunch. It’s about on par with what Fjord has been managing for food lately.

“No,” she says. “Thank you. Do you mind if I—tell people? Do you need anything?”

“Please,” Fjord says. “Tell anyone. I don’t—know everything, but we’ll need a little time, I think.” He glances at Caduceus.

“I think that’s right,” Caduceus agrees.

“Of course,” she says. “Just let me know.”

“What do we owe you? For the groceries,” Fjord asks.

“Nothing,” she says. “They’re a gift.” Seeming on impulse, she steps forward and embraces Caduceus; he hugs her back immediately. 

“Can I ask,” Cara begins. “How…”

“It’s a long story,” Caduceus says. “The simple way to put it is that I was pulled away by something, and the Wildmother guided me back.”

She nods. “Then I am grateful to Her for that.

“So am I,” Caduceus says, softly. His eyes find Fjord’s. “So am I.”

\---

After breakfast is done and the dishes are washed, Cormorant skitters back to her room to change. Fjord sits down at the table with Caduceus and takes advantage of the moment of privacy.

“Hi,” Caduceus says, smiling at him.

“Hi,” Fjord says. “I—have so many questions.”

“I can try to answer them,” Caduceus offers.

“You were taken,” Fjord says. “I guessed that much. We—Scryed for you, we looked. Caleb and Jester both. Why didn’t it work?”

“They had these—chains, that stopped me from casting,” Caduceus says. “Or blocked you from finding me…blocked magic, I suppose. All of it.”

“The bridge had fallen, due to the rain.”

“I think they did that on purpose,” Caduceus says. “But it was raining, very hard. The girl!” he says, suddenly. “Nadia. Do you know if—“

“I saw her,” Fjord says. “She’s alright. She didn’t say anything.” He starts to scowl. If she’d told Fjord, if he’d known to look—

“They threatened her,” Caduceus says, seeing Fjord’s look. It’s so like Caduceus, to absolve people of the harm they’ve done him, the aid they failed to provide. “She was very afraid.”

“Who were they?”

“Hired mercenaries, at first,” he says, and then hesitates. “Working for…” Caduceus pauses, and then looks almost apologetic. “Avantika.”

His heart stops. “No,” Fjord says, automatically. “No. She’s dead.”

“She’s dead,” Caduceus agrees. “And now she’s gone. I killed her.” He says it like he says ‘I made breakfast’ and the certainty of it stops the scream of panic rising in Fjord’s mind. “But she was a revenant. Undead. She was looking for the crystal.”

“From you? Are we in danger here?”

“She thought you were dead,” Caduceus says. “When you—she thought, she knew you had died on the ship.”

“And didn’t—know you brought me back. You brought me back, and she didn’t know.”

Caduceus nods. “And she didn’t know about Cormorant, of course. I think—she probably heard my name, from someone.”

That’s—better than Fjord had thought, when Caduceus had first said it. Better than them being hunted, specifically, across these decades. “Where were you going?”

“To Uk’otoa,” Caduceus says, simply. “She thought he could—get the information from me, somehow.”

Fjord shudders involuntarily. The image of that—Uk’otoa, and Caduceus, in the same place, Caduceus in chains—it doesn’t bear thinking about. “And she’s dead.”

“Yes.”

“But Uk’otoa—he’s still out there. He still wants…”

“We knew that,” Caduceus says.

“I know.” But in the long years since, it’s felt less real. Fjord still worries, of course—they’re going to have to have a hell of a conversation if Cormorant ever feels called to go out to sea. “We need to—have a plan.”

“Okay,” Caduceus agrees. “We should ask the others.”

“Yes,” Fjord says. Then, he remembers. “Oh, shit. They all think you’re dead, too.”

“Huh,” Caduceus says. “We should call them.”

“Can you do that now?” Fjord says. He sees that flash of uncertainty on Caduceus’s face—the face he makes when Fjord has asked for something impossible or at least very difficult and he’s going to try it anyway. “No,” he says. “Could you do it if you rested more?”

“Yes,” Caduceus says.

“You should rest,” Fjord says, firmly. “Stay here. I’ll take care of things.”

Cormorant comes charging back in then, and Fjord enlists her to bring in blankets while he builds up the fire, moving coals from the stove to the fireplace to get it going. Once it’s roaring pleasantly, Cormorant makes a nest in front of it, fussing with the exact folds of the wool until she declares it done. Caduceus starts off sitting in it with a cup of tea, at her insistence, but he soon has it set aside on the hearthstones and then he is curled up asleep.

Cormorant sits by his head and pets at his ears, like you would a cat. “Let him rest,” Fjord warns.

“I am,” she says, but Fjord is pretty sure she goes back to it as soon as he turns his back.

He finishes cleaning up. He puts on real clothes. He goes through Caduceus’s old things, bandages, potions, herbs that have kept for three months, and lays them out of the counter. He’ll ask Caduceus to take a look at his own injuries, once he’s up to it. Or Jester. Jester will be there soon.

The idea of the Nein in their house again—for this, for disbelief and joy and getting something instead of losing it—makes Fjord smile the whole time he works.

There is another knock, eventually. He’s still smiling when he opens the door to find Olivia. “Hi,” she says. “I wanted to see how you were. Actually, come out here, would you mind?”

It’s cold out. Fjord is at least dressed now. He follows her out onto the porch, uncertain. “Is something wrong? Caduceus is home,” he says.

“Cara told me. I wanted to talk to you a moment, first,” Olivia says.

“What is it?” Fjord asks. He isn’t sure why he’s anxious, except that Caduceus is out of his sight, and Olivia has a very serious look.

“I know—I’ve always thought Caduceus was a good man,” she says, quietly but firmly. “And I know how hard you grieved. But when someone leaves, just because they come back—you don’t have to take them.”

“Oh,” Fjord says, after the moment it takes him to catch her meaning. It is somewhat endearing that she wants to protect him, if only because almost no one has worried about Fjord in this way. But Caduceus is the last person he needs to be protected from like this—Caduceus, who never leaves anything, except dragged away from it still clinging with bloody fingernails.

But he supposes he can see her worry. Most people do not have the sorts of history that make “being kidnapped and having your own death faked” the first recognizable story. “He didn’t want to—“ he starts to explain, and then breaks off. There are easier ways than words. “Come in. He might be sleeping,” Fjord says, quietly.

She follows him into the cottage and they both pause just inside the threshold, as she sees Caduceus. He is indeed still asleep in the little nest of blanket and pillow they’d piled up by the fire. He looks a little less ghostlike than the night before, but still obviously ill. The way he’s curled up, Fjord knows Olivia can see the bandages at his wrists and on his feet. Cory has tucked herself in the hollow of his curled form and gone to sleep herself.

“Oh,” she says, and he hears her voice melt in sympathy, looks back to see the naked concern on her face. “Oh, I see.”

“He, uh,” Fjord is surprised by how hard it is to say. “It took a lot, to make it home.”

Olivia draws herself up. “We’re all here, for all three of you. Tell us what you need.”

“Us” is, of course, Bluecove. The village had closed ranks around Fjord when Caduceus had died—had, Fjord knows now, been taken—and they will do it now, he knows. From Olivia, word will spread easily.

“Thanks,” Fjord says. “I don’t...I don’t know, really. Just. I think he’ll be alright. Just...time.”

“Someone will bring something by,” she says, as though he hasn’t spoken. “Don’t worry about cooking.”

Caduceus likes the cooking, Fjord knows, but he’s also barely in a state to stand right now. “Thank you,” he says. “Really. It means...”

She draws him into a warm hug. “You’re very lucky.”

“Believe me,” Fjord says, “I know.”

\---

Caduceus wakes not long after Olivia goes. “I can do it now,” he says, blinking sleep from his eyes. “Who first?”

“Jester,” Fjord says. “Call Jester.”

Caduceus nods, and casts Sending. “Hi, Jester.” Fjord holds up his fingers, counting the words for him. “It’s me. Caduceus. I’m home. And alive. Home and alive. It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it later.” Caduceus looks at Fjord.

“Three left,” Fjord says.

“I missed you,” Caduceus finishes.

It’s not the message Fjord would have written—mainly because it conveys a minimal amount of information—but it does tell her the most important thing.

“How was that?” Caduceus says.

“Good,” Fjord starts to say, and then Caduceus’s ears flick back and Fjord knows Jester is replying.

“Well?” Fjord asks.

“She’s, uh,” Caduceus laughs a little. “Excited.”

“Yeah,” Fjord says. “How do you feel?”

“Good,” Caduceus says, without any thought. “Should I not?”

“No,” Fjord says. “You realize, they’ll all want to see you.”

“I want to see them,” Caduceus says. “Will they come here?”

“They did before,” Fjord says. “When you—didn’t come home.” How strange, to not say _when you died,_ when he has been thinking of his life in terms of _before_ and _after_ for so long. _Before my husband died, we would…_ and _After Caduceus died, I…_ a neat intersection of his entire being, and now Caduceus is home. Caduceus is here. Another segmentation.

Fjord once wondered if he was going to spend the rest of his life changing, growing, reinventing himself—a snake shedding his skin, a hundred, thousand times. Then there was Caduceus, who reached down through all of the masks to the heart of him. He had been so relieved to find something that felt true to himself for so many years, and then that person too had changed, and grown, trying to fill empty spaces after the man he loved was gone.

It’s a strange brilliant joy, to be able to change just one more time.

“That was good of them,” Caduceus says.

“They love you,” Fjord says.

“And you,” Caduceus points out.

“That, I know,” Fjord assures him. He has never doubted that.

“Oh,” Caduceus considers. “Do you think Jester will tell everyone else? We probably should have talked about who to call...”

Fjord is about to say they can Send to someone else if Caduceus isn’t too tired for it, but there is a crack in their kitchen of magic and air displacement and Caleb is standing there breathless, in his shirtsleeves with ink stains on his hands as though he’s come directly from working in his study. Which he probably has, Fjord thinks.

“Mein Gott,” he says, staring at them at the table, Caduceus wrapped in the quilt, Fjord with an arm around him. He drops to his knees.

“Hey, now,” Caduceus stands gingerly. There is a distant pang in Fjord’s chest as he watches him take up his staff just to limp across the kitchen, but then he drops down right next to Caleb. “I’ve missed you.” He holds out his arms.

Caleb is not the most touchy-feely man, but he accepts the hug instantly. He is shaking. Fjord stands too, coming over.

“What Jester said—I owe an apology, I did not believe her—“

“Thought I was dreaming,” Fjord tells him. He sits down too, leaning against Caduceus. He pats Caleb’s shoulder. “When I saw him, I thought, this can’t be real.”

“How?” Caleb asks. “We tried to locate you, to Scry—“

“Oh,” Caduceus says. “The, uhh. Manacles were enchanted. She was kind of proud of that.”

“Who is she?” Caleb asks. He draws back but not too far.

“Avantika,” Caduceus says.

“She is dead,” Caleb says, in just the way Fjord had, when Caduceus told him.

“Undead,” Fjord says. “Something—she’s gone now, Caduceus said.”

“Gone how?” Caleb demands.

“Burned to ash. I felt her go,” Caduceus adds. “Before she could touch the water.”

“Thank Melora,” Fjord says, not sure if he means it as a warding off of evil or an oath.

“How long have you known this?” Caleb demands. “When did you get back?”

“We talked a little this morning,” Fjord says. “He got home last night.”

“You did not ask before?” Caleb is critical, which if Fjord is being generous is just an attempt to cope with the lack of control he has here.

“I did,” Fjord says, with a glance at Caduceus. “But I didn’t get much of an answer and I thought I was dreaming, so I figured my subconscious just left a couple plot holes.”

“I didn’t know you thought that,” Caduceus says. “When did you think that?”

“Last night,” Fjord admits. “I—knew you were real when I woke up this morning.”

“Oh,” Caduceus says, and then he smiles at Fjord. “You were so kind. You took such good care of me. You didn’t think that was real?”

“I don’t...” Fjord shakes his head. “I just. I wanted to do it. While I had the chance. However I had it.”

He ducks his head. Caduceus is looking at him with such love he can’t stand it.

“Tell me,” Caleb says. “All of it. This can’t happen again.”

“Are the others coming?” Caduceus asks. “If it’s all the same to you...I’d rather tell it only once.”

“Shit,” Caleb says, and then reaches for his components. “A moment.”

“Caleb,” Caduceus says, and Caleb stops. “I’m very glad to see you again.”

Caleb looks at him, and sighs. His shoulders slump, and the tension goes out of him. “It is…” he shakes his head. “Very good to see you safe.”

“Thank you for being here for Fjord,” Caduceus says. “And Cormorant.”

“Hmm?” Cormorant was still asleep by the fire, but is sitting up now, blinking at the sound. It’s going to be hard to get her to sleep tonight, Fjord thinks wryly, but he can’t bring himself to force her to do anything. “Uncle Caleb!”

“Hello, schatz,” Caleb accepts her hug. “I am going to get everyone else.”

“Everyone’s coming?” she beams.

“Yes,” Caleb says. “I think everyone is coming. Ah, we should plan.” He takes the Sending stone from his coat pocket and calls Veth. They can only hear one side of the conversation, but it sounds like Veth knows the others are coming and they’re coordinating as best as they can.

Caleb goes out to the garden and carves a teleportation circle into the earth to get to Nicodranas. It is apparently something of a mix of spells that get them all there—Caleb’s initial teleport, teleportation circle back to Nicodranas for Veth, teleportation circle with her to Zadash, where Beau is, except Jester is with her, and back with the three of them. Then he’s gone again for Yasha, leaving Jester, Veth, and Beau in their living room.

“Fucking hell,” Beau says.

“You cussed!” Cormorant exclaims, delighted.

Jester merely flings herself at Caduceus. “You’re okay!” she starts out sounding full of delight, and then she starts to cry. “Oh my gosh you’re okay, I missed you so much.”

“I missed you too,” Caduceus hugs her back tightly. “I missed you all.”

“Caleb said something about Avantika, what the hell, man,” Beau says.

“What’s that?” Cory asks.

“It’s—yes. It’s a long story,” Caduceus says. “Can we—I’ll tell you all. I’ll tell you all everything.”

There is a pop as Caleb reappears with Yasha. She is wild-eyed until her gaze lands on Caduceus. Then she walks the few steps towards him and places a hand on both shoulders.

“Hey,” Caduceus smiles.

“You’re here,” Yasha says.

“I’m here,” Caduceus agrees.

“I’m going to give you a hug,” she declares, and then she does. Caduceus is the only person Yasha ever looks short next to, and she seems to enjoy the ability to tuck her head under his chin and hold on.

“It seems we have, ah, much to discuss,” Caleb says. Some of his calm seems to have returned.

“Yeah,” Caduceus says. “Does anyone want tea? It’s kind of a long story.”

“I’ll make it,” Fjord says, because he’s heard a little of it, at least. “Cory, come help me.”

“I want to hear it!” she says.

“Cory,” Fjord says.

“No!” she says. “I want to know!”

“Cormorant,” Caduceus says. “Please?” He doesn’t say it like a warning. There’s no exasperation to it. It’s just a question, or more accurately a request.

She locks eyes. “Why not?”

“Because we’ll tell you everything at some point, but I think there a lot of things you don’t know about yet, and when we talk about it we’ll start from the beginning.” Caduceus glances over her to meet Fjord’s eyes. Fjord stifles a little sigh, because Caduceus is right—there are things that Cormorant needs to know at some point, and some point might be now, and if she is going to hear about Uk’otoa and Avantika and the story of how Fjord found the Wildmother in a way that is accurate to detail instead of reduced to a bedtime story, it should happen all at once.

“Okay,” she says. “But you promise you’ll tell me later?”

“I promise,” Caduceus says. She turns to Fjord then.

“I promise,” Fjord repeats, and they go and get the kettle.

Cormorant goes to her room with surprisingly little fuss when the tea is done. Caduceus hasn’t gotten very far—they’ve fallen into litigating what exactly happened to the bridge, and whether Nadia was a scared child or, as Beau says, ‘a sneaky little shit’.

“She was afraid,” Caduceus says.

“Let’s not condemn a ten-year-old,” Fjord says, although he’s privately very angry about that, too. He sets down the tray of teacups. “Where are we?”

“There were two men,” Caduceus begins, and then he talks for a long time. He gets interrupted a lot, and at first Fjord tries to stop them, and then he realizes that Caduceus appreciates the breaks, that the pauses let him breathe and drink his own tea. He tells them about the journey up the coast by cart, about meeting Avantika on the ship, about how she was looking for the Cloven Crystal. About how she believed Fjord was dead.

“Good,” Caleb says. “That makes this very easy. Come here, I have something for you.”

Caduceus sits forward obediently, and Caleb produces something from his pocket and places an amulet on a chain around Caduceus’s neck.

Fjord recognizes it. It is the amulet that Caleb wore every day for years, up until the day that Trent Ikithon’s blood was going cold on the ground. Then he’d taken it off, and Fjord hadn’t realized that he’d kept it until this moment, when he is leaning forward and bestowing it on Caduceus.

“Well,” Caduceus says, looking down at it. “We’ve done this before.”

“And you will keep it on, this time,” Caleb says. “Yes?”

“Yes,” Caduceus says. “I’ll be honest with you, I don’t remember when I stopped wearing the Periapt. But I see Cory’s got it now.”

Fjord hadn’t realized he’d noticed, but of course Caduceus notices everything.

“Then what?” Beau says, and Caduceus keeps going. To the boat, to the endless cycle of storms and stills and unfavorable winds, a thousand factors keeping the ship from getting to its destination. The sea itself in opposition.

“The Wildmother,” Fjord says. “Wasn’t it?”

“I think so,” Caduceus says.

“Or really, really good luck,” Beau says.

“I don’t believe in coincidences,” Caduceus says, “Even though they happen.”

“You said you killed her,” Caleb says. “You did not make it to Uk’otoa?”

“No,” Caduceus says. “There was a storm. Last night, there was a storm.”

Even skimming over the details, Fjord can read the things Caduceus is not saying. Can read the moments where he was afraid. The moments when he called out to the Wildmother and wasn’t sure She’d answer, the moments when it seemed like the sea would swallow him after all and what Fjord had once believed about his fate would be true. He reaches out and takes his hand and doesn’t let go, just holds on like a tether through the whole story, through the storm and the lightning and the fight and the endless sea.

“And then I was here,” Caduceus points, through the window, “And I saw the lantern in the window, and I walked home.”

Fjord looks, automatically. There the lantern sits, the little stub of the candle he’d lit the previous night still in it. In the time it has taken Caduceus to work through his story, it has begun to grow dark, and yet Fjord feels no urge to light it.

He is missing nothing. There is no one he loves, lost out on the waves, waiting to be guided home.

“Welcome back,” Yasha says, very quietly, in the silence. “We have missed you so very much.”

“Are you done?” Cormorant asks. She is standing in the doorway; Fjord isn’t sure if she’s been eavesdropping this whole time or merely came when she heard the voices stop. Caduceus doesn’t look startled to see her, so Fjord expects he’ll know, either way.

“Yes,” Caduceus says. “Do you want dinner?”

“I’ll help!” Jester proclaims, throwing herself to her feet.

“That’s alright,” Caduceus says, sounding a little alarmed.

“We’ll all help,” Veth says, grinning a little wickedly. Caduceus grimaces, but eventually resigns himself to it. They use the groceries Cara brought, make a root-based winter salad and roast fish or mushrooms with lemon and rosemary on top of rice. They all follow directions very well, even though Caduceus, voice raw from talking for so long and almost certainly still from the seawater, gives instructions in a low voice.

The house fills with the smell of cooking food. They make another pot of tea. Jester insists on making cupcakes, and she and Fjord do it, although she keeps darting back to where Caduceus sits, talking to Caleb and Yasha, and making him explain things, check her measurements, tell her what it’s meant to look like.

Every time, the thought _let’s ask Caduceus_ drifts across his mind, and he feels the odd sensation of tripping and catching yourself. The way you expect to fall and then you’re fine, you’re completely fine, but your mind is still reeling.

All these months, and he hasn’t managed to stop looking for the gaps at all. All these months, and he’s merely started to adjust to the pain. And now it’s gone, and he’s whole, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. Doesn’t know what to do with the joy of it, the way his eyes keep drifting across the kitchen to Caduceus and Cormorant, to the rest of the Nein, his family all in one place the way he thought they might never be again.

The cupcakes come out of the oven and Jester frosts them prettily, and they taste delicious. Fjord doesn’t know what they did wrong, last time.

“Do you mind,” Yasha says, looking up from the crumbs on her plate, “Do you mind if we all stay, for a few days?”

Fjord and Caduceus make eye contact and Fjord knows they’re thinking the same thing.

“No,” Fjord says. “We’d like that a lot.”

\---

It’s good to have everyone there, Caduceus decides. Nice to have an extra set of hands in the kitchen—although the five sets of hands, he could do without. Nice to have Veth’s jokes and Yasha’s steady presence and Jester’s exuberant joy and Caleb’s careful planning, promising that they will come up with a plan, they will do something about Uk’otoa. The amulet around his neck is a relief he hadn’t even realized he was looking for. Beau drags Fjord out on runs along the beach the next few mornings, and Yasha follows with Cormorant on her shoulders. Caleb and Veth spend a lot of time whispering together, planning sometimes, sometimes just the overflowing chatter of best friends who have been apart for too long, Caduceus thinks. Jester insists on helping in the kitchen, and so they bake bread together and while it bakes, Jester mentions very casually that she has some healing spells this morning, if he wants them, and she sinks Cure Wounds into his still-healing burns and scrapes and aching joints until he hardly feels the sting.

“Can I come stay?” she says, the second morning, when they’re repeating the ritual, her hands on his wrists. “This summer. I’m not teaching a class this summer.” He knows she’s thinking about when she has to be back home to her art students, how little time they really have.

“Of course,” Caduceus says. “We’ll be glad to have you.”

“Good,” she says, and casts another Cure Wounds.

Fjord doesn’t like to leave, Caduceus knows, so he keeps pushing him out the door whenever one of the Nein ask. They can’t be afraid of this. It won’t happen again, so they can’t be afraid of this. But he’s a hypocrite—Fjord’s obvious relief whenever he walks back in the door and Caduceus is still there, or when Caduceus comes back with Cory and Yasha from the market, is reflected in Caduceus’s own heart.

Caduceus sleeps a lot, catching up on all the peaceful rest he’s missed out on. His wounds heal. The lightning that split through him is going to scar, but the wound is in a way beautiful, like someone has let a fern made of fire and light grow a path through his skin. With a bit of coaxing of the lichen, he thinks the color in his hair will come back. Cormorant holds on very tightly when they hug, and he and Fjord drift towards each other whenever they’re in the same room, the needle on a compass eternally spinning to the north.

Small wounds, for what it is. They’ll heal. They’ll scar. Everything is drifting back together, the way it was meant to be.

There are a few things to take care of, though, niggling at the back of Caduceus’s mind. A few afternoons later, one of them feels like it can’t be put off anymore, and so he goes outside when no one is looking, out the back door.

Caduceus sits in the back garden, considering the right words, for a long time before he does it. After a while, his mind slips from the words to the garden. A lot of the vegetables have been harvested by now, in his absence. What remains is going to seed. Only a few winter fruits are still there. The berries remain—blackcurrant and raspberry, heavy on the bushes. He plucks a blackcurrant and bites into it. The tart flavor bursts across his tongue. They have sugar; he should make jam. Cormorant had mostly watched him do it last year, but he thinks she’s old enough now to help.

Old enough now, he thinks, for a lot of things. He was gone for a few cycles of the moon, and Cormorant seems to have grown up so quickly. He isn’t sure what to do with time—never was. Family condition.

Which brings him back to what he’s really doing. That’s how he always knows when a duty becomes unavoidable: his mind brings him back to it. And he woke this morning thinking about his family, and knew he’d put it off too long.

Before he can back out, he raises a hand and makes the right gesture. “Wildmother, carry my words.” The magic comes as it should, no backlash or ache, just a warm rush through him as the power activates. He takes a deep breath.

“Hi, Mom. It’s me. Uh. Caduceus. I’m alive. There’s…some stuff happened. It’s okay now. I’m home.” He can’t think of what else to say. Doesn’t Jester always run out of words with these things? “I love you. We’ll visit you again soon.” With that, he feels the spell break.

There’s a few moments of silence. He picks another blackcurrant and rolls it in his fingers. The words come through before he can bite into it. _“Caduceus! Oh, honey, it’s so good to hear your voice. You have to tell us everything. Give our love to Fjord and Cory. Thank Melora—“_

Her words cut off then, but Caduceus can imagine the rest of the invocation. He puts the berry in his mouth, chews. Still tart. Really better as a jam. He thinks about calling Clarabelle, too. Maybe tomorrow. Whatever he wants to say to her, he doesn’t think that twenty-five words will do.

“Whatcha doing out here?” Beau says from behind him. “Fjord’s jumpy whenever you’re out of his sight.”

“I know,” Caduceus says. “I’m coming back in. Have you ever made jam?”

“Yeah,” Beau says. “New hobby. I make shittons of jam. All jam, all the time.”

“Oh, great,” Caduceus says placidly, although he knows she’s being sarcastic. “You can help, then.”

“I was—“ she checks his face, breaks off. “And you’re just fucking with me right back. Got it.”

He smiles. Beau reaches out and picks a raspberry. “These are good,” she says, popping it in. “The little black ones are kind of nasty, though.”

“They’re the ones for jam.”

“That’s why you came out here? Jam planning?” Beau pauses, and Caduceus can’t tell what it is that’s twisting her expression until it morphs into a wicked grin and she says, “If we make jam it could be a _jam session_.”

“Ooh, that’s good,” Caduceus says. “I was Sending to my mom.”

“Oh, shit,” Beau says, suddenly serious. “You good?”

“Yes,” Caduceus says. “I had been—putting it off. I don’t know why. We both feel better for it, I think.”

“Yeah,” Beau says. “Your parents love you, they’ve gotta be thrilled. They were super fucked up about it, I think. Jester used Sending last time, like to tell them? And she came back in crying.”

“I’m sorry,” Caduceus says.

“What?”

“I’m sorry that you grieved,” Caduceus says, because he can read too easily the truth beneath what Beau is saying, which is _I was super fucked up about it._

“Shut the fuck up,” Beau says. “Sorry we thought you were dead. We should have been the rescue party.”

“It all worked out in the end,” Caduceus says. He does mean it. He certainly wondered, on the worst nights on that ship, if the Mighty Nein might be coming. But Avantika had covered her tracks well. He certainly doesn’t hold it against them. He never managed to call out to them, either.

“Still,” she says.

“Can we…” he thinks about it. “Can we just agree that it was bad for everyone and no one should feel bad about it?”

“Yeah,” Beau says, relieved. “Fucking sucked. I missed you, dude.”

“I missed you too,” Caduceus says. “You should come stay in the summer.”

“Mmm,” Beau says. “Isn’t Jester coming in the summer?”

“Yes,” Caduceus says. “Seems like a good time for you two to work things out, doesn’t it?”

“We’re not—like that,” Beau says.

“You’ve never asked her,” Caduceus points out.

“I don’t know,” Beau says. “I don’t know how she’d…I don’t even know how you know about this.”

“I have good hearing,” Caduceus says. “And what I know is…life is short. Spend it with the people you love, as much as you can. Come for the summer. Whatever you want to happen with Jester. We’ve missed you.”

“Yeah,” she says. “Alright.” In a single smooth movement, she stands. Holds out a hand and helps him to his feet. Caduceus envies her grace; she’s older in human terms than he is for a firbolg, but her joints don’t seem to protest the way his do. “Come on. Let’s go back in before Fjord has an aneurysm.”

“Can’t have that,” Caduceus agrees, and they go back in to the others.

\---

Veth goes first, back to her family and her shop. Caleb returns a day after, back to Rosohna, where Fjord guesses he will throw himself wholeheartedly into the work he is planning to keep them safe. He comes back though, to get Jester and then Beau. Yasha leaves herself, taking a ship, when the Stormlord calls her. Fjord wonders if her god had anything to do with that storm, with the lightning that saved and scarred Caduceus.

They’ll probably never know which parts of it were luck and which were the divine. Some things, Fjord is okay not knowing.

Still, it’s strange and a little empty once they go, and it hits Fjord like a blow in the quiet.

Fjord is lying in bed when it happens. Caduceus has yet to join him; he tires so easily that he has been napping on and off throughout the day, but it leaves him restless at night. Still, he’s nearby, slowly moving towards sleep—unlooping his hair from the pins and braid, carefully working a soft brush through the curls too fragile for anything else. Fjord watches him, watches his fingers on the wood handle, the downward curl of one corner of his mouth that betrays his dissatisfaction, the swivel of his ear towards the sound when Fjord sits up and the sheets rustle. He sets down the brush and drifts into the next room and Fjord can picture him perfectly, the path he will take into a kitchen, the way he will set the kettle on the stove and measure out the water and the tea leaves, the way he will bring it back to bed, carrying a cup for Fjord as well.

Wherever Caduceus is in the house, Fjord has a sense of it, like some invisible tether. Or maybe it’s just the familiarity, that he knows these floorboards and Caduceus’ footsteps and heartbeat like nowhere else, like nothing else and no one else.

That is when Fjord thinks, _oh. I almost lost this. I had lost this._ The breath rushes out of him like he’s been knocked prone by a wave, like he’s been slapped and he sobs, suddenly unable to do anything else.

He lost this. Those cold months, missing, wishing, feeling grateful for haunted dreams because at least it was a fragment—memory does not compare to having Caduceus, to seeing him, to knowing him. Having this again has reified the loss—to feel again what he has and know its magnitude. Caduceus’s absence had felt like a tangible thing, a shadow in every room. His presence is so much more than that. In his grieving, Fjord remembered in fragments, mourned piece by piece—this is the way Caduceus smiled, this is the way his breath sounded against the pillow when he was not quite asleep—but in totality it is insurmountable. How had Fjord been going about the task of missing him? How could he have ever been finished at it?

And this, too—the tears are streaming down Fjord’s face and before he has taken a third hitching breath, Caduceus is there, gathering Fjord in his arms. “What is it, what’s wrong?” He’s subtly checking Fjord for injuries.

Fjord just shakes his head. “Nothing, I—nothing.”

“You can tell me,” Caduceus says, very gently.

“It’s because—nothing’s wrong. You’re here—I missed—“

“I’m here,” Caduceus confirms, low and steady. He draws Fjord close. Fjord sobs into his chest, clutches at his thin shoulder. He can feel Caduceus’ heartbeat and he chokes out another sob. Caduceus smells like moss and like the subtle smoke of the hearthfire and still a little bit like the sea. He could have never done this again, held this again, heard the low rumble of Caduceus’ voice through his chest.

“What can I do?” Caduceus asks. He strokes Fjord’s hair, gentle. His fingers linger on the edges of Fjord‘s ear, just firmly enough not to tickle, but soft enough to feel like kindness.

“Stay,” Fjord sobs out. He wants to stop crying—because he has already cried so much for this reason back when it was a reality, and why should he do it now when it is nothing but a bad dream? But he has woken from the nightmare and still sobs from it.

There has always been some shame in that, for Fjord. To wake trembling from nothing more than the shades of his own mind, the haunting of a distant beast. But in Caduceus’ hold he has been able to let go of it, to shake, to sob, to let go of the emotions as the dream fades and accept it as something natural and allowed.

So he cries, and grieves for the last time, mourns those months of being alone and Cormorant’s misery and Caduceus’ pain and everything he could have lost forever, and Caduceus holds him through it until his tears give way to sleep.

When he wakes in the morning Caduceus is still snoring beside him, and the candle in the window has gone out—was never lit, he realizes, because he never lit it, because there was no one lost to call home. And Fjord feels lighter, as though he has somehow unconsciously released a burden he did not realize he was carrying.

\---

Cormorant prods them both out onto the porch in the evening, insisting that she’ll make the tea. Caduceus and Fjord sit down and let her go to work behind them, rattling the cabinets open and shut. The sunset is in full glory, blazing orange to red to purple against the horizon. Good weather tomorrow, Fjord thinks absently.

“This is nice,” Caduceus says.

“We used to do it a lot,” Fjord says. “When you were gone. Sit out here, I mean.”

Caduceus stares out over the ocean. “It’s very peaceful,” he says.

“Do you think Cory’s alright with the kettle?” Fjord asks.

“She’ll be fine,” Caduceus says.

“Were you making tea, at her age?” Fjord asks.

Caduceus frowns. “At seven? I’m not sure I was talking.”

Fjord pauses. “Firbolg.”

“Firbolg,” Caduceus agrees, cheerfully.

There is a clatter from inside. “It’s fine!” Cormorant shouts preemptively.

“Let us know if you need help,” Fjord calls back, because he can’t help it.

“I’ve got it!” she shouts back.

The sun is shifting. The red has shifted to a more muted pink, melting into violet. That distant edge of the sea against the sky keeps drawing Fjord’s eye.

“Knowing now, that you were out there all that time...” Fjord says, staring down at the shifting pattern of light on the waves. “I don’t know. I dreamed about it when you were gone but I really thought they were...dreams. Wishes. I knew you were gone.”

“I can’t imagine,” Caduceus says. “I keep trying to imagine it.”

“Don’t,” Fjord says. “You don’t—“ he stops. He was going to say _you don’t have to_.

“I will,” Caduceus says calmly. “Someday. But not for many, many years, I hope. We have time.”

That has become a small mantra for them. We have time. But not forever; there is no such thing. And Caduceus will live what Fjord has lived, and will repeat it, with each of the Nein, with fewer and fewer of their friends around him to hold him up. And someday—after the rest of them are dead—he will lose Cormorant.

Fjord does not want to dwell on the memory of grief. But he also knows it is a luxury that he can choose not to, a boon granted by good luck and fate and the Wildmother and Caduceus’s steady stubborn love that carried him home. Someday Caduceus will have no choice.

“We have time,” Caduceus repeats softly. “But if anyone would know, I think...can you live with it?”

 _Will I be able to live with it? Will I have a life, after you and Cory are gone?_ That is what Caduceus is asking, and it is a strange blessing mixed in with all the hurt, a pearl tossed up on the shoreline by a wave tangled in the rotted netting and dead fish, that Fjord is in a position to answer him.

Fjord would still be here, if Caduceus had really drowned those months ago. He would be sitting on this porch watching the sun go down. Cormorant would be sitting beside him, or inside still trying to make tea. And some part of Fjord would be aching, the ragged edges of the wound left in his heart when Caduceus was torn out of it. Cormorant would have grown up in this town with one father who loved her here with her and one father who loved her in the ground, would have grandparents and aunts and uncles, adopted and not. Fjord would have kept seeing his friends, baking with Jester and walking along the shore with Yasha and sparring with Beau and growing old, here. He would keep growing, the garden growing, Cory growing. And even then he could see the beauty of all those things, bits of life tangled together, the way the forest continues with a piece of it gone.

But Caduceus returned. Caduceus came back to him, borne back on the tide, stumbling home towards the light. So this, too, Fjord can imagine: Caduceus will be here, will watch Cory grow up and Fjord grow old, watch the last of his dark hair turn grey, watch the wrinkles deepen in Fjord’s face. And after that he will bury Fjord, and will bury Beau and Caleb and Jester and Yasha and Veth, and years after that he will bury Cormorant. He will grow old, over centuries. He will care for so many people, here or elsewhere, and love them and bury them, too. He might travel again, or settle down somewhere else, carrying his light with him, or live here in this house in the memory of them. Wherever he goes, Fjord knows there will always be places for him, in Bluecove or the Grove or in Rosohna.

There will be wounds. The price of loving something is the pain of losing it, and Fjord knows Caduceus holds on tight, loves fiercely enough to cross oceans and weather storms. He will carry his scars and go on, and he will hurt, and grieve, and he will be loved, and out of the broken places a new life will take root, and grow.

And if Fjord was strong enough to lose him, to mourn, to face the most unfathomable loss, the one irreplaceable thing he allowed himself in a life built always to be temporary, then this is the reward—that for everything Caduceus gave him, all the answers and certainty and love, Fjord has this own certainty to give back to him.

Caduceus has always known he is strong enough to hold on, and Fjord knows too that he will be strong enough to let go, in the end.

 _Can you live with it?_ “Yes,” Fjord says. “It...is going to hurt like hell. It was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. But it was alright. It was...going to be alright. And so will you.”

“Thank you,” Caduceus says, quietly, and Fjord takes his hand, and they sit there and watch the sun slip beneath the sea.

“I did it!” Cormorant announces from the doorway, triumphant. She offers the first cup to Caduceus, who takes it and thanks her, then darts back in the house to make the same offering to Fjord before running back for her own.

They sit in a mutual comfortable silence for a while. The tea is warm and sweet and tastes of spice and cinnamon, probably something Fjord bought in Port Damali. As the world gives into the period of dusk, the sun gone but the light remaining, the stars beginning to appear one by one like candles going on as the sky darkens, Cormorant says, “Can we do this forever?”

“Nothing lasts forever,” Caduceus says. “But we can do this for a long time.”

“I don’t like that,” Cormorant says. “I think the house will be sad without us.”

“Well, we didn’t build the house,” Fjord tells her. “It was already here.”

“It was?” she blinks. “But it’s ours.”

“It is now,” Caduceus says. “But maybe it will be here for someone else someday. Maybe your children. Maybe someone we don’t know.”

She looks thoughtful. “It won’t miss us?”

Fjord glances at Caduceus. “It might,” Caduceus says. “But it will have new people. That’s how the world works.” He glances at Fjord. “Nothing lasts forever. It sprouts, and it grows, and it dies, and something else grows out of it.”

“And someone else will have the house?”

“Someday,” Fjord says. “Not for a long time.”

“Not for a long time,” Caduceus agrees. “But someday the whole world will be someone else’s.”

“I didn’t think of that,” Cory says.

“But it’s yours now,” Caduceus says. “And you’ll become part of it, in the end.”

“So it will be mine forever,” she says. “A little bit.”

“Yes,” Fjord agrees. “And you’ll belong to it. And to Her.”

Cormorant nods. “I think...I think I’m okay with that. But maybe...not yet. I’m not ready yet.”

“You don’t have to be,” Fjord reassures her.

“Will I be ready then?” she wonders.

“I don’t know,” Caduceus says. “You have a lifetime to find out, though.”

She nods. “Is that a long time?”

“Depends on who you ask,” Fjord says, after a pause.

“I’m asking you,” she says, promptly.

“I don’t know,” Fjord says, after a longer pause. They are quiet for a while. In the still-darkening sky, the stars blaze brightly above them. Cormorant tilts her head up to look, and Fjord follows her gaze up to the two distant moons that will shine over this house long after he is gone, and feels very small.

“Yes,” Caduceus says, after so long that Fjord has almost forgotten the question was asked. “I think it’s the longest time in the world.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It would mean the world if you could leave a comment.
> 
> If you liked this, check out my other Critical Role fics [here](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrome/pseuds/Chrome/works?fandom_id=5406982).
> 
> I'm [catalists](http://catalists.tumblr.com/) on Tumblr or [@chromecatalists](https://twitter.com/chromecatalists/) on Twitter.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [all the bulbs all coming in to begin](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28465296) by [Capitola](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Capitola/pseuds/Capitola)




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